Scenes:

- 442nd veteran in eastern France, in hills above small town of Biffontaine. 1994. Five decades since he and comrades fought to liberate the French. At terrible cost to the American Nisei. The gentleman, in veteran’s cap, walks towards the memorial with his family. It is a French-American family, mixed race kids.

- The veteran’s house is stuffy. The mildew is terrible. It smells of sickness. His wife has cancer, she is on oxygen. He attends to her, they are devoted to each other, they have been married since WW II. She was an Italian girl, and he was a G.I. who had manned a machine gun, he was looking for love. She spoke no English. They fell in together, he picked up Italian, they married and he brought her home to Denver. He has Reagan photos on the wall of his den. This about five years ago. They may both be gone. I listened to them speak precious phrases of Italian to each other. Sotto voce.

- The director and I are old, old friends and collaborators. We disagree in gentle, unspoken ways. We know we both have a temper. She’s half white, half Japanese, and we are close in age. We are close in temperment, attitude. She has more drive than me. I attribute that to her SF upbringing and her half-whiteness. That may sound funny, but her parents met and married and produced an interracial family right after the close of the war. An unpopular time, as you point out, for J peeps. Her mother had a strong character and attitude. I believe she got her iron will from her mother.

Possible, yes. Rare for the time, yes again. Commercial for Hollywood?