Love and gratitude for Kyoko Nancy Oda

My friend Kyoko Nancy Oda passed away on May 14. Remembrances and tributes to her are still pouring in as I write this, and will continue up to the Tule Lake Pilgrimage in July, and beyond. I’m still learning about the amazing things Kyoko did and the tremendous impact on all the communities she was part of.

• Kyoko Nancy Oda — obituary

Kyoko opened so many doors for my film, They Took My Father Too, now in post-production. When my adapted script was freshly drafted and I was figuring out how to get support to produce it, she championed the film project to the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Collective. Their involvement and support was key to my first funding proposal, which was decisive.

I don’t remember the first time I met Kyoko, but it must have been at the Tule Lake Pilgrimage, usually biannual, that I’ve attended since 2010. Once I got involved with translation of Tessaku around 2020, I entered her orbit more. She had published Tule Lake Stockade Diary, a substantive translation of her father Tatsuo Inouye’s incarceration writings. Once UC Berkeley professor Andrew Way Leong launched the Tessaku Translation Collective in late 2022 Kyoko and I both joined the overlapping Tessaku Community Advisory Board. So I started seeing her several times a year in person and remotely in this special undertaking.

In the middle of 2023, having extensively researched the story and further developed my project, I still wasn’t sure I would be ready to apply for funding in the upcoming cycle. I also was planning to take a family trip to Japan in the fall. So I was considering waiting another year before submitting a proposal to the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) grant program of National Park Service that November. But Kyoko urged me to push ahead, and kept putting me in touch with people who would be key supporters. So Kyoko really was the one who lit a fire under me to get it done that year.

By July of 2024 I still didn’t have an answer from JACS. But I saw Kyoko at the Tule Lake Pilgrimage, which I was attending both as a video producer for the Tessaku translation project and to kick off They Took My Father Too. With Ken Ochiai joining me as co-producer, I covered the packed schedule of pilgrimage events. On the day of the massive Tule Lake memorial service held at each pilgrimage, we set up to interview community voices inside the Tule Lake jail.

In daunting summer afternoon heat, following hours of sitting outdoors, Kyoko made her way to the jail to respond to my questions. She had been struggling with the effects of her cancer fight, and I could see that it was taking its toll on her. But she was determined not to be held back from all she had come there to do, which included giving presentations throughout the weekend. I felt bad for adding another exertion to a marathon weekend, but I feel that we shared a sense of purpose that she was willing to sacrifice for.

It’s that endurance, the quality summed up as gaman in Japanese, that had a special grace in Kyoko. She must have been enduring so much inside in those two years I saw her more often, but I never heard her complain or saw her looking grim. She didn’t have a false veneer of cheer either. There was a gentle, soothing quality she brought with her that made heavy tasks lighter.

And in the following year Kyoko opened her home to me as I prepared and produced my film in Los Angeles. She and her husband Kay hosted my auditions, fed me, provided all kinds of support from props to community contacts to encouraging me, listening and helping me stay sane through this ambitious, challenge-filled undertaking.

Along the way I spent a lot of time with Kyoko, and beyond seeing how generous she was to me and so many others, got to really cherish her as a person. I didn’t realize how short a time I would have. I last saw her in September, but just weeks ago she was still helping me with my production. When I was searching for sakura trees to shoot for my film she sent me a collection of pictures of them from her backyard.

I was in touch with Kyoko up to a few weeks before she passed away. She had told me she was undergoing treatment but her tone was optimistic. I shared with her that my father was also getting treatment for cancer and she replied, “Modern science is amazing.”

A film is a small thing compared to a human life, especially Kyoko’s. But she treated my project as important, contributing enormously to it. In the wake of her passing, I feel an even deeper calling to honor her by completing They Took My Father Too up to its greatest potential.