STRANGE LAND

My Mother's War Bride Story

A film by EMMY winner Stephanie J. Castillo

Listen to an interview with Stephanie

in a podcast with the San Francisco Chronicle.

View the 4 minute clip from the Honolulu Advertiser story.

The Film

STRANGE LAND explores one war bride’s story, and her journey and adjustment, not only to a strange place, but to a man with whom she thought she had something in common.

Norma Vega Castillo came to America from the Philippines at the end of World War II as the war bride of an American GI serving in Manila. She and nearly a million other war brides from more than 57 countries made that journey from across the sea to a new life in American. They had met and married U.S. armed forces personnel fighting or stationed overseas before, during and after the war.

Both of them were of Filipino stock. She from Manila, he from Hawaii and the son of an immigrant. But after making the long journey to her new homeland, Norma soon finds out that falling in love with an American-born Filipino is not enough. Their cultures clash and are so radically different that it stuns her into a mournful beginning of loneliness and grief. She deeply misses her family, her customs and her homeland, and she deeply regrets her marriage.

STRANGE LAND, though the story of only one war bride, pulls on universal heart strings of those immigrants who know what it is to leave for a strange place and to make a new life with all of its unknowns. Like the other war brides, Norma had to find a way live with a bottomless longing for her family back home while she moved forward and created a family in America .

This film unfolds the poignant story of an immigrant bride who is ultimately transformed by her perseverance and by her acceptance that there will be no turning back.

Director's Statement

My mother Norma was among the first war brides of WWII trained to "serve an American husband". At age 17, she met my father – a Hawaii-born, son of an immigrant -- in Manila during American occupation and married him there. She arrived in Hawaii from the Philippines in 1946 pregnant, a stranger to this land.

This tribute to my mom is a tribute to all war brides who left their homelands and their families and their cultures to begin a new life in America with their soldier husbands.

My mother became a war bride, not because she fell in love with my father the soldier, but because America had filled her with dreams -- a dream of education and opportunity for her children who were yet to come and a dream to send some of her new riches home to her family as they recovered from the ravages of war.

What happened to her dreams? Were they fulfilled? Was her sacrifice worth it?

My mother's story is like that of hundreds of thousands of women from some 50 countries who were GI brides from Asia and Europe . During commemorations of WWII, little is said about these brave women and the pain and heartache they felt leaving home for a dream or about the families they helped start in America after the war.

My tribute to my mother will be personal and universal, a footnote for the history books. My hope is that other children of war brides will look at their mothers and their sacrifices with greater understanding and appreciation, and that Americans will pay tribute with me to these brave women who came to this strange land determined to make a home for their American-born children to come.

STRANGE LAND is my ninth documentary project and the second of three portraits in my TATLO (THREE) series. TATLO, inspired by the 100th anniversary celebration of Filipino immigration to America, is an homage to ties that bind and ties that express a deep love of country, forever friendships, and familial sacrifice.

The TATLO portraits, when completed, will reveal how three Filipino Americans live within a larger tapestry -- amid the backdrop of World War II and the Philippine-U.S. immigrant experience. Through TATLO, I pay respect to three of my elders whose lives have touched mine -- my war-bride mother, a chaplain to his war buddies, and an independent cartoonist.

As Hawaii 's most prominent independent Filipino American filmmaker, I am preparing these three portraits of Hawaii Filipino Americans as a contribution the Filipino Centennial Celebration in 2006. My intent is to offer these for use in planned conferences and forums that year, in local PBS broadcasts, and in local and national film festivals.

STRANGE LAND is the second portrait to be finished; the first was REMEMBER THE BOYS, the story of WWII veteran and Hawaii-born, son of an immigrant, Domingo Los Banos and his Hawaii boys cohorts. It was shown last year at the Hawaii International Film Festival.

The third portrait, which I hope to complete in 2007, will feature Corky Trinidad, an independent, nationally syndicated political cartoonist whose work is published daily in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

I am the principal underwriter of this 90-minute film trilogy, donating my time and equipment and effort. A small grant to cover a small part of my cost was awarded the project by the 2006 Filipino Immigration Centennial Celebration Committee.

about the filmmaker

A former Hawaii newspaper journalist and an EMMY Award-winning independent filmmaker, Stephanie has been developing television documentaries full-time since 1989. She holds an MBA (2000) from the University of Hawaii and was a 1999 Selected Professions Fellow with the American Association of University Women.

Her Honolulu-based production company, ‘Olena Productions, completed its first documentary -- the EMMY Award-winning SIMPLE COURAGE -- in 1992 as a co-production with Hawaii Public Television.

In Oct. 2006, SANDAAN, a 90-minute documentary on 100 years of Filipino immigrants in America, premiered at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Directed by her long-time filmmaking partner Noel "Sonny" Izon, the film is one of several joint efforts by Noel and Stephanie, who is the documentary's co-producer and co-writer.

In May 2005, AN UNTOLD TRIUMPH: THE STORY OF THE 1ST & 2ND FILIPINO INFANTRY REGIMENTS, U.S. ARMY, aired in national prime-time on PBS. Directed by Sonny, Stephanie was the lead writer and associate producer. Narrated by actor Lou Diamond Phillips, it had its world premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival on Nov.4, 2002 and won the BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO Audience Award for Best Documentary.

Completed in 2004 was AN UNCOMMON KINDNESS: THE STORY OF FATHER DAMIEN. Stephanie was co-director, co-writer and co-producer with Daniel Marra and Walter Josten. Actor Robin Williams narrates the piece. Distributed by Blue Rider Pictures in Los Angeles, the biography won a CINE Golden Eagle.

COCKFIGHTERS: THE INTERVIEWS, an 8-hour DVD/VHS seriesssss was completed in 2003. The controversial project explores the subculture of cockfighting from the point of view of American cockfighters. A two-hour version had its world premiere at the Cinema Paradise Film Festival in Honolulu in 2003.

In 2004, she co-produced a cable television series, HAWAII’S REEL STORIES, that featured the works of local filmmakers.

Stephanie continues to research and seek funding for TREASURED ABOVE GOLD, a project now ten years in the making. It will tell the remarkable story of the historic connections between Korea and Japan through the story of abducted Korean potters and Korean teabowls used in Japanese tea ceremony.

She also produces marketing and sales videos.

about Norma Vega Castillo

Norma was born in the central Philippines to a large family of Tagalog and Spanish descent. She spent her teen years under Japanese occupation during World War II. After the war, she met Wallace Castillo, a Hawaii-born son of a Filipino immigrant. After a short period of courtship, the two married in Manila and Norma followed her soldier husband to Hawaii where her life in America began.

She is the mother of seven daughters. As a military family, the Castillo’s lived in Japan and the Philippines until 1967 when they returned to Hawaii. She was widowed in 1981 and lives with one of her daughters on the island of Kauai. Now in her late 70’s, her life is full with 18 grandchildren and so far 21 great grans, and Filipino friends who help keep her young and active.

a production of 'OLENA MEDIA

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