“I don’t think we should depend on Hollywood to tell our stories with the nuance and the depth and the care that they really deserve,” Nina Wallace, media and outreach manager at Densho, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the stories of those of Japanese descent. “But it is true that these institutions that are in positions of power, positions of influence, put more value on stories of men like Oppenheimer, like Truman, than it does on the Asian and indigenous communities that suffered because of decisions that those men made.”

I understand how showrooms and Hollywood cannot be all-encompassing. … But I think it also points societally to the lack of nonwhite, non-U.S. initiatives or perspectives,” said Stan Shikuma, co-president of the Seattle Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. “That lack of more of a global perspective allows atrocities to continue to happen because we still dehumanize other people that we don’t know.”

Films about other perspectives, Shikuma said, often fall on the independent filmmaking community.