Feature Film:
Row Don’t Drift:
An American Legacy
Friday October 23, 2026
2:00 PM - 4:15 PM
Row Don’t Drift:
An American Legacy
"Row Don’t Drift: An American Legacy" explores a pivotal moment in American history when wartime hysteria met principled resistance. When birthright citizen Yoshi Kubo and his family were forcibly evicted from their California farm under the World War II Japanese exclusion order and confined in a bleak internment camp, he feared that his land and livelihood were lost to him forever. Forced to collaborate with unlikely allies and to choose between military conscription and imprisonment as a conscientious objector, Yoshi took an unconventional stand against oppression. Through persecution and perseverance to triumph, his story has echoes that reverberate to the present day.
Q&A line up coming soon!
watch trailer
Q&A Guest and Moderator
Director: Karina Ezitis
Karina Ezitis is a filmmaker from Merced, California. Raised in Hawai’i, Karina relocated to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a SAG actor. Prior to marrying an agricultural engineer and relocating to the Central Valley, she directed several theatrical plays. When the pandemic struck, she decided to reinvent herself. Applying her knowledge of theatrical directing and her observations on film and television sets to developing skills as a director and cinematographer, she completed a course in filmmaking at The Art of Documentary online academy. Since then, she has been a three-time successive winner of the regional mini-documentary showcase The Big Tell, which airs on Central Valley PBS, and has won filmmaking grants from the California Heartland Creative Corps, the United States-Japan Foundation, the California Civil Liberties Program, the Takahashi Charitable Foundation, and the California Arts Council. “Row Don’t Drift: An American Legacy” is her debut feature film as director.
Moderator: Janelle Wang
Janelle Wang is an anchor for NBC Bay Area News, co-anchoring the 5 p.m. newscast alongside Jessica Aguirre and the 5:30 p.m. newscast with Raj Mathai. She also reports for the station’s 6 p.m. newscast.
Since joining NBC Bay Area, Wang has earned three Emmy Awards for her coverage of the Valley Fire in Middletown, the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland and the North Bay wildfires in Wine Country. Her reporting has taken her around the globe, including to Sochi, Russia, for the Winter Olympics and to Kansas City for the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory.
Prior to NBC Bay Area, Wang spent more than eight years at KGO-TV ABC7 in San Francisco, where she covered a wide range of stories, from the deadly San Bruno gas explosion to the steroid scandal in professional sports. She also reported extensively on the Scott Peterson murder trial, with her courtroom notes reaching readers as far as South America and Europe.