Around Town … with Robert Airoldi: Local veteran Lawson Sakai featured in ground-breaking AI tech interview
Museum visitors can ask Lawson Sakai questions such as “What do you remember about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?”
Lawson Sakai with filmmaker Cole Kawana who produced the new high-tech film interview.
Photo courtesy Ellen Kawana
By Robert Airoldi
Robert Airoldi
Former South Valley resident Lawson Sakai is featured in an interactive new exhibition at Los Angeles’s Japanese American National Museum. The groundbreaking storytelling technology uses artificial intelligence to give visitors the experience of “talking” with the World War II veteran.
Sakai was a long-time resident of Gilroy as well as Morgan Hill in the closing years of his life. He died last year at age 96. He was a decorated member of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the founder of the Friends and Family of Nisei Veterans group,
The museum’s exhibition was conceived and sponsored by the nonprofit Japanese American Stories using StoryFile, Inc. technology. It was featured on CBS on Sunday, Nov. 28, in a special hour-long primetime edition of Sunday Morning titled “Forever Young: Searching For The Fountain Of Youth.”
More than 1,000 questions were asked of Sakai over five days of filming. Capturing Sakai’s oral history preserves a remarkable life: Sakai received four Purple Heart Medals and a Bronze Star Medal, having participated in major campaigns including the liberation of Bruyeres, France; rescue of the “Lost Battalion” in France; and breaking of the Gothic Line in Italy.
The interviews were filmed using StoryFile’s “capture technology” of 27 different cameras, positioned around Sakai for a 360-degree view. This special filming technique will allow the video to be eventually projected as a holographic exhibition, once that technology becomes more accessible. Currently, the Sakai JANM exhibition is presented on a life-size flatscreen.
The StoryFile AI storytelling technology gives visitors the ability to engage with someone that is not actually present. It allows a visitor to see the interview subject, consider a question, then come up with the answer, and reveal their emotion as they tell their story.
Museum visitors can ask Lawson Sakai questions such as “What do you remember about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?” and “What was life like after Pearl Harbor?”
It’s good to see Sakai’s wisdom about war is now held in high-tech.
Gilroy High School FFA club members display the canned food that was given to St. Joseph Family Services. Photo courtesy Maribel Garcia
Students in the Gilroy Future Farmers of America chapter showed their compassion by holding a month-long canned food drive starting Oct 11. The young people donated 800 cans to St. Joseph’s Family Center.
“The canned food drive was a contest between all first period classes for not only the members of the chapter but also for all the students who attend Gilroy High School,” Maribel Garcia, the club’s reporter, told us.
The students learned about compassion by helping to feed families in need. Kevin Jarquin, a freshman, said, “It feels good to give back to so many people who are going through a lot right now, who are struggling, and who are less fortunate than me.”
Caitlyn Correia, a freshman, found she felt “fulfilled by the ability to give to those in need” and she had “learned it doesn’t matter how big or small the donation is, people are still grateful for it and that we as people should donate more often.”
Good job, Gilroy FFA members!