Interview for DisOrient film festival with Lane Nishikawa, award winning playwright who wrote and directed Only The Brave.

Disorient: Between knowing about the imprisonment of American citizens and the Japanese American 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team, is there equal emphasis on making these facts known through the movie?

Lane Nishikawa: The film focuses on a platoon of men during October of 1944, after they have just liberated three French towns. The next assignment they're given is to go into the Vosges forest of France and reach a trapped battalion of Texans of the 141st infantry regiment — of the 36th Division. These Texans had moved too quickly and were cut off by the Germans. Their other regiments had tried for five days without success to reach them. They were pulled back, and the 100th/442nd were sent in. They fought for four days, reached the trapped battalion and saved 211 of the 275 Texans but suffered 800 casualties of their own.

In between the battles, we go back to moments that some of the men have with their families, whether it was men who came from Hawaii or men who came from the internment camps.

D: So there are flashbacks, you would say, where they mention the internment?

LN: Yes, but also with men who came from Hawaii. The 100th battalion was the first group of Japanese Americans to fight in Europe. They were composed of the Hawaiian territorial guard, just like our National Guard. So what you had was 1400 men who went over as a unit and during the first six months they suffered 900 casualties. During this time a full regiment, the 442nd was being trained; the majority coming from Hawaii and the rest coming from the internment camps.

Before the 442nd completed their training, 600 replacements were sent over to beef up the 100th battalion. Then, the 442nd joined the 100th battalion.

D: Where was filming done?

LN: We shot the film in Los Angeles — the majority shot in the back lot of Universal Studios. And then for the battle scenes we shot in a park in Pasadena. We needed some shots with pine trees and there was a pretty good area we found. And then we used the Japan America Theatre of Los Angeles as a sound stage.

D: What does the movie focus on more? Is the action used to punctuate the meaning of the rescue and the grueling battle or more on the interaction between the soldiers?

LN: The beginning of the film is seen through the eyes of a platoon of Japanese Americans securing and taking a French town from the Nazis. But what happens in the first moments of the film is we lose a couple of the men. And you can see how, from their perspective, how each man's life means so much. At the same time, what we start to do is understand who our main players are and we start to see where they came from and what type of family relationships they have. Because when they're sent in to rescue the Texans, they have no control. It's all based on orders from above. And the goal is to reach the Texans and we're going to lose the majority of the men.

D: How much was authenticity a focus of the making of the film? Like uniforms and environments...

LN: We had terrific military advisers and production staff. Our military advisers were ex-marines who do History channel reenactments. They're schooled in terms of tactics, weapons and costumes of World War II. Now our costumer Larry Velasco, the last film he did was We Were Soldiers with Mel Gibson. All of our production people came from very big budget movies. They came to our project and brought their expertise and we were very detailed in what we were going to put on screen.

D: So would you say you drew in some big names because of the project's subject matter?

LN: What we were able to do was bring in people on the production end who had a tremendous amount of experience who read the script, and wanted to help us make the best picture we could. As far as casting goes, I think we really have an elite group of Asian-American actors.

We also have Jeff Fahey who plays the officer of the Texans. Jeff starred in the Lawn Mower Man. He also played Johnny Ringo in Wyatt Earp. Another actor Guy Ecker, has a reoccurring actor on "Vegas" but his credentials are incredible in terms of South America. He's an American born, South American. For us, they were both great to have on the team.

D: How did you hear the story to write the script? Was it just over the years that you heard it from your uncles, and went back and collected them?

LN: I had four uncles who served in the 100th battalion/442nd. I've known about the 100th/442nd forever. You know, since I was a kid. I guess for me as an artist, I was in theatre for many years and I wrote a number of plays based on their experiences but I felt that at a certain point, we'd be able to get to where we would need to be to be able to shoot a film like Only The Brave. But you can't just go in and shoot a film so I did two shorts prior to shooting Only The Brave. I wanted to be ready and I wanted to have the right group.

A tremendous amount of people worked on our film. We had 37 speaking roles, an 85 man crew, 60 PAs that volunteered and 120 volunteer extras. I had 307 people on the set on our biggest day.

D: Why hasn't this story been told before: the story of 100th/442nd who were the most decorated unit in American history for size of unit and time served, and the story of the Japanese American internment camps?

LN: There was one film made in 1951 called Go For Broke, starring Van Johnson as the officer of the 100th/442nd. The focus was on Van Johnson and his dilemma of being assigned to this group of men. And of course like all of the officers of the 100th/442nd came to respect these men. But it follows a tremendous amount of time — training, going to Europe, fighting, and coming home, so you're getting glimpses of periods of time in a 90 minute movie.

As for the internment camps, how many movies have you seen?

D: I haven't seen any.

LN: There's Farewell To Manzanar, based on the book, directed by John Corty. Come See The Paradise starring Tamlyn Tomita and Dennis Quid. There was probably a little bit of the internment camps in Snow Falling On Cedar. So, there haven't been a lot of full-length feature dramas on the internment camps. And you say why — well, it really takes someone who wants to tell that story, someone who it means something to. Just like any film if it means something to a writer, producer or director then they're going to do a film on that subject. Now we do have a lot of Japanese American writers, producers and directors and I tell you, every one of them would like to have done a film on the 442nd. It's just that, getting to that point is not an easy road.