DUST
DUST is a visual poem film composed of eight poems written and narrated by poet and writer Brandon Shimoda, each visually interpreted through the artwork and motion design of Glenn Mitsui. Together, they illuminate the stories of eight men who were shot and killed by military police while imprisoned in U.S. concentration camps during World War II. Through the poems—“Wakasa,” “The Guard Tower,” “Dust,” “Martyrs,” “Tumbleweeds,” “The Stone,” “The Moon,” and “The Waves”—the film confronts the government’s myth that the camps were safe and orderly places of “protection.” They were not only traumatic, but deadly—sites of silence, fear, and erasure. By paying tribute to the eight men, DUST becomes a ritual of remembrance and resistance, linking their untold stories to the present-day realities of detention centers, where confinement, dehumanization, and state violence continue under different names.
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Glenn MitsuiDirectorWakasa Spirit Stone
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Brandon ShimodaWriter
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Project Type:Experimental, Short
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Runtime:13 minutes
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Completion Date:November 11, 2025
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Production Budget:1,500 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
Glenn Mitsui is a Seattle-based filmmaker, designer, and multidisciplinary artist whose work blends historical memory with motion art, projection design, and community-centered storytelling. A descendant of the Tule Lake, Heart Mountain, and Topaz concentration camps, Mitsui’s projects explore the afterlives of incarceration and the ways art can illuminate histories often pushed into silence.
Mitsui is the visual artist behind the Wakasa Spirit Stone traveling monument, where he creates films projected onto the surface of the lantern replica at the precise sites where men were shot and killed in the U.S. concentration camps. His work has been featured at the Manzanar, Tule Lake and Minidoka Pilgrimages, and the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.
His latest film, DUST (2025)—written and narrated by poet Brandon Shimoda and visually interpreted through Mitsui’s artwork—honors the eight men who were shot and killed by military police while imprisoned during WWII. Mitsui’s broader practice includes Lights Through the Shadows and the forthcoming documentary Where the Roots Run Deep.
He is co-owner of Mitsui Creative with his wife Arlene, where he develops films, installations, and visual narratives grounded in memory, resilience, and community.
DUST confronts a truth long pushed aside: the U.S. concentration camps were not only traumatic—they were deadly. Eight men were shot and killed by military police while imprisoned during WWII. Their stories, scattered across six camps, were reduced, distorted, or forgotten.
Brandon Shimoda’s eight poems opened a way to approach this history with emotional depth. His writing holds the weight of loss and the echoes of lives cut short. My work was to interpret his poems visually—using motion, landscape, and abstraction to sit with what the official record cannot hold.
As a descendant of Tule Lake, Heart Mountain, and Topaz, this film is personal. The government weaponized geography itself: placing families in remote deserts and basins chosen for their isolation, extreme temperatures, dust storms, and distance from witness. These sites cut people off from the world and obscured the violence that occurred there. The land became part of the punishment, shaping daily life and hiding the truth of what happened.
With DUST, I wanted to honor the eight men whose deaths were never given dignity. By returning to the harsh geographies that shaped their final hours—and by speaking their names—the film becomes an act of remembrance and a reminder that this kind of state violence did not end with the camps. It continues today in different forms.
