‘My America . . . Or Honk If You Love Buddha’

In her delightfully wry 1996 documentary, Renee Tajima-Pena (pictured) attempts to answer this question, in regard to Asian Americans: “Will we truly ever belong in America?” Tajima-Pen~a’s answer is yes, but not before she delves deeply into her own family history as the Chicago-born daughter of Japanese Americans--whom she considered carbons of Ozzie and Harriet--and into the lives of various others, most notably, well-known character actor Victor Wong. Most nisei are like Tajima-Pena’s parents, big on seeming all-American. But their children--the sansei (third-generation Japanese Americans)--have wanted to reclaim a sense of Japanese cultural heritage while coming to terms with the legacy of the World War II internment. Tajima-Pena’s probing of this legacy, which many older Japanese Americans have found too painful to discuss with their children and grandchildren, constitutes the 1997 film’s most poignant passages (KCET, Sunday at 5:30 p.m.).