Samurai in the Oregon Sky

In 1942, Japanese pilot Nobuo Fujita catapulted his seaplane off of a submarine, flew over the forests of southern Oregon, and conducted the only manned aerial bombings of the United States mainland during WWII. He never dreamed he would one day be invited back to the region, where he would begin a 35-year friendship with the people of a small Oregon town. Samurai in the Oregon Sky tells the story of how Mr. Fujita came to refer to his former target as his “second home.” 

Ilana Sol is a filmmaker and archival researcher living in Portland, Oregon. She has worked in the film industry for 20 years on a variety of independent, educational, and commercial projects. She enjoys searching through old documents in libraries and archives to find important stories that have been lost to time, and her work is a result of this. She has conducted archival research for multiple documentaries including THE WINDING STREAM, BIG JOY, QUEEN OF THE SUN, and for exhibits at the Smithsonian and the Oregon Historical Society. Her first film ON PAPER WINGS won 7 awards and was included in an episode of NPR’s Radiolab. SAMURAI IN THE OREGON SKY is her second film.