If Tomorrow Comes

I agree with every previously posted comment. The made for TV movies of the early 70's were far superior to anything the networks have aired since. I too recall this movie being airing the week after Brian's Song. Both films made a huge impression on me. Both films found me crying at the end. Both films were worthy of theatrical release and it's truly a shame "If Tomorrow Comes" isn't available on DVD. Patty Duke's talent is well acknowledged and documented. Unfortunately, Frank Liu's really hasn't been. I've never forgotten his performance. I was a teenager in the 70's. I'm also a Caucasian. His charisma was palpable and it's the first time I experienced an attraction to someone outside of my race, which is appropriate in view of the inter-racial theme of this film. Highly recommended.

Underrated, and understated, this short (1 hour and 16 minutes) film says more in that length of time than many of today's bloated features do in twice the time.

One particularly funny (though it may not have been intentional) scene featured an "Okie" challenging a Nisei to a fight with a baseball bat. The Nisei said something like, "Ah, you know KENDO, Okie?" After that, you knew that the "Okie" had made a bad mistake...

A touching story about a Caucasian American girl who falls in love with a Japanese American boy circa WWII. It is one of the few well done movies of the 1970s. This is one of those films everyone should watch. We are just people and love is love. I won't go into detail and spoil it.

TV movies back in the 70s were, well they were TV movies. Some good, some silly, some not so good. This was an excellent movie. When it came out in 1971, I was 15 going on 16 girl. The movie was done with compassion and let those who did not live it, the realization of what transpired in the US during WWII. Is is so relevant in this day an time when so much is spinning the world out of control again. Those that are old enough to remember that time have warned us this is what it felt like back then. This movie has stuck with me all my life. Years later after I left the Army I came home back to Sacramento and I had two good friends, one Japanese, one Chinese. I learned both sides of the story of WWII. May's parents immigrated from Hong Kong. Her mother absolutely hated Japanese for her whole family was wiped out during the war. Erin's parents were just kids when they were moved and put into the camps here in the US. I also worked with a gentleman who was one of the Japanese men allowed to be in the military. He had fought in Italy. I am a history buff and that era, and especially the war, has intrigued me. To think that a hundred million people died in the last century due to the prejudices of all the races. You would think by now that man would have gotten past all this.

Now I am reading a free book I bought on my Kindle. It is "It Had to Be You" by Cheryl Bolen. It and the movie now playing with Claudett Colbert called "Three Came Home" brought this movie back into my mind. The other book is about a couple who marry right before WWII and she goes with him to the camps. This one is the story of a woman living in a camp in the East Indies. I do wish they would air the TV movies again, especially this one. The current generation should be able to see what the world was like and what it could be again if we do not learn from it.

I was not prepared for the impact that this movie had on me when I first saw it, over 20 years ago. I came through the era of the Patty Duke Show, and saw her in Helen Keller, but this film is my all time favourite. I have sat up and watched it again when it was relegated to the late movie, and again when it was relegated to the late, late movie. I have not seen it for a very long time, but it stays in my mind and the best of the best that I have ever seen. Definitely, an oldie, but a goodie.