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This May, KLRN celebrates Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month!
We’re featuring a special lineup of programs that showcase the rich culture, history and traditions of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
Check out our featured programming below and watch with us all month long – on-air and online at klrn.org/live or via the PBS Video App.
A special thanks to Bank of America for supporting these extraordinary programs.
KLRN 9.1
May 2 | 9PM | independence Lens: Try Harder!
At Lowell High School, San Francisco’s academic pressure cooker, the kids are stressed out. With a majority Asian American student body, high-achieving seniors share their dreams and anxieties about getting into a top university. But is college worth the grind?
May 3 | 10PM | Reel South: SeaDrift
In 1979, a fatal shooting ignites a maelstrom of hostilities against Vietnamese refugee fishermen along the Gulf Coast. Set during the early days of Vietnamese refugee arrival in the U.S., "Seadrift" examines this turbulent yet little-seen chapter of American history and explores its consequences that continue to reverberate today.
May 10 | 8PM | American Masters: Waterman - Duke Ambassador of Aloha
Duke Kahanamoku’s incredible life parallels American history in the 20th century and Hawaii’s transition from independent kingdom to statehood. The film chronicles Duke’s super-human accomplishments (Olympics, surfing, lifesaving), how he overcame major obstacles (racism, Hollywood prejudice, financial hardship), and the irony of his fame after his death.
May 17 | 9PM | American Masters: Tyrus Wong
Until his death at the age of 106, Tyrus Wong was America’s oldest living Chinese American artist and one of the last remaining artists from the golden age of Disney animation. The quiet beauty of his Eastern-influenced paintings had a pioneering impact on American art and popular culture.
May 22 | 3PM | Silent Sacrifices: Stories of Japanese American Incarceration
Silent Sacrifices: Stories of Japanese American Incarceration illuminates a dark chapter in American history. In February 1942, just 10 weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of any or all people considered a threat to national security from designated military areas. Silent Sacrifices shares the experiences of Japanese Americans who were living in the San Joaquin Valley prior to Executive Order 9066.
May 24 | 8PM | American Experience: Plague at the Golden Gate
A fascinating medical mystery and timely examination of the tense relationship between the medical community, city powerbrokers and San Francisco’s Chinese-American community, Plague at the Golden Gate tells the gripping story of the desperate race against time to save San Francisco and the nation from the deadly plague.
May 24 | 10PM | Betrayed: Surviving an American Concentration Camp
Betrayed examines the incarceration of Japanese Americans in the Pacific Northwest in order to tell a universal story about unjust imprisonment and the loss of civil rights.
May 29 | 2PM | The Misty Experiment: The Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail
The story of the special U.S. Air Force squadron whose pilots volunteered for one of the Vietnam War’s most dangerous air missions. Their assignment: search for enemy supply transports and anti-aircraft installations concealed within the web of trail paths and waterways collectively known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The squadron also directed rescue operations for U.S. and allied aircrews shot down.
May 29 | 4PM | Unsettled History: America, China, and the Doolittle Tokyo Raid
Unsettled History: America, China, and the Doolittle Tokyo Raid examines a key moment in American/Chinese history, exploring how the two sides remember this shared event in different ways, the reasons for this divergence and what lessons it may hold for today. Recounted by children of the Raiders and their Chinese rescuers, the program offers emotional insights that only family members can provide.
KLRN WORLD 9.2
May 2 | 6AM | Newsroom Tokyo
This program gives you comprehensive coverage of events in Japan and Asia. It explains the day's developments and what is behind them.
May 2 | 9AM | Asian Americans
The history of identity, contributions, and challenges experienced by Asian Americans.
May 2 | 10AM | The Ito Sisters: An American Story
"The Ito Sisters" is a feature-length documentary film that captures the stories of three Japanese American sisters, interviewed in their 80's and 90's, as they recount how their immigrant parents struggled to make a life in America at the beginning of the 20th century.
May 3 | 6:40AM | Pacific Heartbeat
An anthology series that provides viewers a glimpse of the real Pacific.
May 3 | 12:30PM | Asia Insights
This 30-minute international newscast produced by Japans national public broadcaster NHK looks at the realities of Asia today.
May 3 | 4PM | American Experience: Mr. Tornado
Japanese American researcher Tetsuya Theodore Fujita, aka Mr. Tornado, created the Fujita scale of tornado intensity and damage, and is credited with advancing modern understanding of severe weather phenomena.
May 5 | 8PM | Story of China
Travel from the Silk Road to the Yellow Sea with host Michael Wood as he explores the history of the world’s newest superpower. A thrilling and moving epic of the world’s oldest continuous state with the landscapes, peoples, and stories that made today’s China.
May 7 | 6PM | Hayao Miyazaki: 10 Years with the Master
HAYAO MIYAZAKI: 10 YEARS WITH THE MASTER is an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the genius of Japan’s foremost living film director. Hayao Miyazaki is the creator of some of the world’s most iconic and enduring anime feature films, including Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro and the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away.
May 7 | 8PM | Norman Mineta and His Legacy
Meet the statesman who served as cabinet secretary for Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. Imprisoned by the U.S. during World War II for his Japanese ancestry, Mineta rose to become the first Asian American to serve in a presidential cabinet.
May 9 | 6AM | NHK Newsline
HK WORLD provides the latest news from Japan, Asia and around the world.
May 11 | 2:30PM | Guru Nanak: The Founder of Sikhism
Born in 1469 in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan, Guru Nanak Dev Ji is the first guru and founder of Sikhism – the fifth largest religion in the world.
May 12 | 2PM | Gandhi's Awakening & Gandhi's Gift
The two-part series GANDHI'S AWAKENING & GANDHI'S GIFT chronicles Gandhi's life and legacy.
May 23 | 10AM | Shinmachi: Stronger than a Tsunami
The resilience of the Japanese business district in Hilo, Hawaii, that was destroyed by a tsunami in 1946.
May 31 | 7AM | Armed with Language
Minnesota was home to a little-known military intelligence school during WWII that trained Japanese Americans be to translators.
