Lucy Ostrander

Lucy Ostrander is an independent documentary filmmaker whose work has focused on Pacific Northwest history and Pacific Rim cultures. Her award-winning documentaries have screened at film festivals around the country and are broadcast both nationally on PBS and internationally. Her most recent film, Honor & Sacrifice, was recently awarded the prestigious Erik Barnouw Award from the Organization of American Historians for outstanding programming in documentary film concerned with American history as well as the History In Progress Award from the American Association for State and Local History.

Lucy received 2014 GAP Award funding to produce a closed-captioned version of the film Honor & Sacrifice and to manufacture 200 DVDs for schools, universities, and libraries. The film tells the complex story of a Japanese immigrant family ripped apart by WWII. The Matsumoto family included five sons; two who fought for the Americans and three who fought for the Japanese. The eldest, Hiroshi (Roy), became a hero, fighting against the Japanese with Merrill’s Marauders, an American guerrilla unit in Burma. At the same time his parents and sisters were living in their family’s ancestral home of Hiroshima. The story is told by Roy’s daughter Karen as she discovers her father’s work in military intelligence, kept secret for 50 years. Roy Matsumoto, who will turn 101 on May 1, lives in Friday Harbor.

Lucy received 2009 GAP Award funding to cover the rights in incorporating archival footage into her documentary. Titled Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol, the documentary is a portrait of Fumiko Hayashida whose 1942 photograph has over time been transformed into a symbol of the Japanese American Internment history. Originally designed as a short project, Lucy decided to take on the creation of a full-length film while capturing footage of 97 year-old Fumiko and daughter Natalie’s pilgrimage to the original Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho State.