The Cats of Mirikatani (Grand Master Artist)

"Jimmy" is a Japanese-American that is an artist that expresses his feelings and emotions through his artwork. He is known for drawing his Japanese cats, but several times throughout the movie it shows him drawing his experiences at the interment camps. He uses this as an expression of the lingering affects it has had on him. After spending 3 and 1/2 years in the interment camps just because he was Japanese, his life was in a spiral from there. He lost his family, he lost his identity, he didn't even have a social security number. 

Jimmy rebelled against assimilating because once he did, he would forget about his culture and what America did to his homeland. He was never correctly reimbursed for the years of being wrongfully detained. The appalling part to me is that I was unaware of all of this. In high school there was a paragraph or two describing the interment of Japanese Americans on the west coast, but they never elaborated on how they were treated, the lifestyles they were forced to live, or what happened to them afterwards. I feel foolish for not asking the question myself, and even more foolish that I had to learn it from a movie. This is part of America's history and people don't even know it happened. All of these are reasons why Jimmy is so spiteful to the American government. 

There were lots of underlying messages that stood out to me throughout the movie. There was a part when I believe the news was on and someone said, "everything ashes". This was an interpretation of the dropping of the atomic bombs and the terrorist attacks on 9/11. This assumption is reassured when Jimmy replied with, "same old story". He experienced 9/11 already, he's seen history repeat itself in front of his eyes. 

The closing to the movie was when Jimmy and his tenant both visited Camp Tule, where he was kept during his interment. This moment reminded me of "Smoke Signals" because in the beginning of the movie the fire is destructive. But in the end, when the trailer is lit on fire it is a cleansing feeling. Just like it Cats of Mirikitani, Jimmy needed to visit Camp Tule to get closure, to finally be able to let go of the past.