If Tomorrow Comes

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.

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.

This was an acting job like none other I've seen from Patty Duke. I remember the first time I saw the movie, it just blew me away. We need to keep these types of movies in circulation so that we as a people don't forget how bad prejudice is in time of war. The funny part, is it happens over and over again and we just don't learn the lesson. Would love to have a copy of this move. If you ever see it being shown on TV, by all means sit down and watch it from beginning to end.

This was a great movie. I saw it along time ago when I was very young. It has stayed with me. I would love to see it again but never find it on TV and can't buy it. Email me you you have a copy. Some movies touch you and you never forget them, this is one of them.

It's a romantic movie with a deeper message, not often found in 1970s TV movies turned out weekly with low production values and retread actors. Love transcends race, community bigotry, hate... but always at a steep price. When I watched it on my parents' living room floor with my siblings and folks, the idea of America interning citizens in concentration camps was new to our Midwestern naive world: Sure, Nazis did that, but us? The guys fighting in Nam to free an Asian people? It wasn't a topic in our history books, it wasn't a topic at the dinner table. We knew Dad served in the Pacific with the Marines... knew the stories... Mom followed him to boot camp in Chicago & San Diego. When he left for Guadalcanal in the Solomons, she returned to her parent's farm because she was pregnant. He marched through the campaign hitting all the battles & got taken out in Iwo Jima with shrapnel from a Jap gernade. But internment camps for American families based on race? How could that happen? They tried explaining it all during commercials... and afterwards for days.

The most poignant moment in the film comes when Patty Duke's character has to prepare his body for burial. I haven't seen the film in 40+ years but the emotional triggers thinking of that scene, are still as strong as they were for that 7 year old kid on his parent's living room.