GOOD TALK WITH YURIKO GAMO ROMER

Writer, Director & Producer of BASEBALL BEHIND BARBED WIRE

REQUEST A GOOD TALK WITH YURIKO GAMO ROMER

Yuriko Gamo Romer began her career as a Madwoman on Madison Avenue. She transitioned her films from seconds to minutes and longer and is now an award-winning director, producer, and editor of independent documentary films. She has just released her short documentary BASEBALL BEHIND BARBED WIRE about the WWII Japanese American incarceration told through the lens of baseball and is currently in post-production with the accompanying feature documentary Diamond Diplomacy, about US-Japan international relations through a shared love of baseball. Her previous feature, Mrs. Judo, was a biographical documentary about Keiko Fukuda (1913-2013), the first woman to attain a tenth-degree black belt in judo. Mrs. Judo traveled to more than 25 film festivals internationally and was awarded the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at the 2013 International Festival of Sports Films in Moscow and broadcast nationally on PBS. Romer was born in Japan and immigrated to the United States as a young child. She is bilingual, bicultural, and has been deeply connected with art since early childhood. She holds an M.A. in documentary filmmaking from Stanford University, where she was a teaching fellow, a National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Scholar, and received a Student Academy Award Gold.

Expertise
I am Japanese American and although I don’t have family who experienced the World War II incarceration, I have close relationships with many subject matter experts and families of people impacted through years of being in this community and researching the film. I’ve also made another US-Japan sports film on judo, so I have extensive experience talking about the subject of sports diplomacy. I feel strongly about the issues of civil liberties, immigration (I am an immigrant), and the issues surrounding “otherness.” I have seen audiences – especially young people – react and engage with me and one another enthusiastically following screenings of the film. For many, it was their first experience learning about the internment camps from a personal perspective as opposed to news and history. I believe that baseball offers viewers a useful side door into these difficult histories, providing audiences with the overall opportunity for a deeper and more human-centered understanding. In my first sneak preview at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, there was an elderly gentleman whose hand shot up at the Q&A. But then he was unable to talk as he held back tears. He explained that he’d had a friend who’d shared that he’d been in the Manzanar camp during WWII. He said that he had no idea what that actually meant and that understanding what these folks went through, he wept for his friend. People seemed to react very strongly to the fact that the Japanese Americans were forced to use toilets with no partitions, and no privacy. There have been interesting reactions to a story Tets shared about his father being hauled away by the FBI because their home used an outhouse with a light that was switched on and off all night. This led the FBI and military to suspect that Tets’ father had been signaling Japanese submarines. On the other side of this, people were moved by the passion and energy that had gone into the love of baseball and could see what this meant and save them from much negativity.

Speaking History
Embassy of Japan, DC. I also consulted on a photo exhibition for the US Embassy in Tokyo. Occidental College, Japanese American National Museum, Asian Art Museum screening, San Francisco State University, Pomona College, Syracuse University, University of San Francisco, US Japan Council annual conference, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Japan America Society, JapanBall, Society of American Baseball Research and their NINE conferences, Edgar School District public schools, Jei-Sei - Japanese American Senior Center, Society of Asian Studies conference, Equinix Corporation, Commonwealth Club. I have moderated several virtual panel discussions and webinars, particularly during the pandemic.