Discover Nikkei

https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/1353/

Introduction to Film

The reason I really took to animation is was the first film I saw was Snow White in camp. You know from all my ten cent saving, of the thing, it only cost ten cents a ticket. You know, so my brother and I we both bought tickets at the mess hall. You know they were selling tickets, you see. But you had to walk all the way, almost across town, to get to the, there's the only color theater, you know, so where they show feature films on sixteen millimeter, you know. 

So I, I...my brother and I we bought a ticket and we went to the cinema, or the theater, and I lost my ticket on the way, you know. So I was in tears, I said, my brother said, "I'm going in so you just go home."  You know? So I was walking home but I traced, this is the honest truth, I traced my path, I walk, I'm coming back, and I find my ticket on the ground. 'Cause I kinda felt I was pulling some paper or hanky or something out of my pocket and it was, my ticket was there.  I ran back. I was just in time to see the film and I saw the Snow White. And I thought, God this was the best thing ever, that I ever seen, and I wanted to be an animator. 


films World War II World War II camps

Date: June 29, 2012

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Chris Komai, John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Jimmy Murakami (1933 – 2014) was inspired as a child to become a film animator by watching the Disney cartoons that were shown to Japanese Americans confined at the Tule Lake concentration camp during WWII. After attending Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, he worked as an animator for UPA. He later founded Murakami Wolf—a company that produced many well-known commercials in the 1960s and 70s—and became a feature film director of When the Wind Blows and The Snowman. After establishing residence in Ireland in recent years, he passed away in February of 2014 at age 80.  (June 2014)

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