"Cats of Mirikitani" Film

The film “ The Cats of Mirikitani,” showed me how we truly do not know what a person has been through in their life until we get to know them. Jimmy Mirikitani may have just seemed like a struggling artist/ homeless person to anyone just walking down the street, but to Linda Hattendorf there was more to him. Linda knew right away that there was more to Jimmy, there was a story that was worth discovering. After the 9/11 attack Linda could not bear to leave Jimmy on the streets alone, so she took him in. Not only was it an opportunity to help someone who needed it but it was also an opportunity to unravel an inspiring story. For Jimmy the 9/11 attacks was history repeating itself, humans always feeling the need to go to war. Jimmy was a Japanese-American who experienced and lived through the Japanese American war. His art consisted of the camp, the war and cats because a boy who constantly followed him in the camp loved cats so he would draw them for him.

Painting for him gave him a sense of release; he turned his hurt into art, along with his memories and experiences. Aside from what he had been through he used art as an escape and was still hopeful about life. All of Jimmy’s siblings aside from one, died in World War II. It was amazing to see that a man that had went through so much in his life and has experienced racial discrimination chose to tell his story through the beauty of art. There are those who let what they have been through in life affect there future but Jimmy never did, judging off of his personality you wouldn’t think Jimmy had gone through so much. In the beginning of the film we see the hurt behind Jimmy’s eyes, we see the obvious and well-deserved resentment he has against America. But in the end of the film you can notice almost a weight being lifted.