Robert Nakamura, ‘Godfather’ of Asian American Film, Dies at 88; The New York Times, December 23, 2025

Jeré Longman, The New York Times ; Robert Nakamura, ‘Godfather’ of Asian American Film, Dies at 88

"In 1971, while a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, Mr. Nakamura made the landmark short film “Manzanar,” named for the camp where his family was interned in the high desert of Central California. It was one of the first documentaries to depict camp life from personal experience.

After returning to the camp in 1969, he went back again and again, in person and through documentaries like the lyrical “Wataridori: Birds of Passage” (1974), which depicted the lives of three first-generation Japanese Americans, including his father, and “Something Strong Within” (1995), a collection of home movies made by the interned that detailed what they endured in the camps, sent there under an executive order by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In “Third Act” (2025), a documentary made by his son, the filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura, Mr. Nakamura spoke about the ambivalence he felt toward Manzanar."