Movie #4: #1 Return and Transform
This first scene begins at the end of World War II. Raymond is currently working for an airplane design company in Long Beach, and Mae is finally able to return home form the camp that she was forced to go to. Their teenage son Joseph is attending USC. Raymond is overjoyed to hear that the war is over, and that his beloved wife Mae, will be returning to Los Angeles. Mae was send to a detainment camp during the war because she was Japanese. The US government attempted to justify their racial stereotyping by claiming that it was for national security. The scene begins as Joseph and Raymond collect Mae from the train station where she is returning from her detriment camp.
Though Mae has physically returned from the camp, she lost all of her spirit and personality. Mae, a formerly talented airplane designer and builder, now refuses to work on any projects. The light has come out of her. Mae, along with thousands of other Japanese americans, were herded into these camps, stripped of their culture and their individuality, and held captive away from the rest of the society. These americans were held in horse racing tracks and other “historical” venues until they were put on trains and brought to camps in places such as Utah.
“The only people who came out of that camp were people without sounds, the quiet Americans. When people ask me how many persons are buried here I say ‘a whole generation of Nisei Americans’”(“Japanese…Target, 1970).
Joseph and Raymond are unable to help Mae very much; she has been permanently changed. Mae will not do anything in the field of airplane design, and instead puts all of her efforts into the arts. She wants to stay as far away from the military sector as possible, and thus uses her talents from drawing airplane sketches to draw cartoons. Mae’s are happy and peaceful—a far cry from her true emotions. Mae’s cartoons are soon distributed among family friends. Later her cartoons were showcases at a local art show, then a local newspaper, and eventually they made their way to walt Disney Studios. Mae’s ability to draw happy, smiley, cartoons, allowed her to escape from her true emotions and depression that she felt from the detainment camp.
Mae’s accepts a job as Disney cartoonist. Here, she is very valuable not only because of her intricate drawing skills, but also because of her connection to Raymond and Joseph, and thus her knowledge of space shuttle, missile, and airplane design. She is able to incorporate this knowledge into her cartoons, just as Von Braun was able to do so in his Disney television series “Man in Space” (Ethington, Space Station Los Angeles: From Peenemünde to Disneyland to Mars).
