MOORE: How many filmmakers do you think have followed the path from snowboarding to filmmaking? [Fukunaga laughs] Other than Hitchcock.

FUKUNAGA: I think Kubrick was a major snowboarder?

MOORE: [laughs] That’s right, I think so. In the Bronx. You’ve had this variety of influences, personal ones. Was it your grandfather who was at one of the internment camps that the U.S. built during World War II?

FUKUNAGA: Yeah. Basically everyone of Japanese ancestry was put into these camps during World War II—except for, ironically, those in Hawaii, because they needed the labor. My father was born in a camp. My uncles were born in a camp. First they were all in Topaz, in Utah, and then in Tule Lake in Northern California, which was a “no-no” camp, where they put people who said “no” to forswearing their allegiance to Japan and “no” to fighting for the military. So they were considered the more troublesome group of Japanese Americans, although they were U.S. citizens. My father was there until he was about 3 years old. So he was there for the duration.

MOORE: And what kind of impact, if any, did that have in your home while you were growing up?

FUKUNAGA: It’s funny, I don’t think I remember hearing about it from my Japanese side. It was the white side of my family that mentioned it. My grandparents never wanted to talk about it; they didn’t think it was very interesting. And my dad doesn’t really remember it that much. My uncles definitely don’t because they were just babies. So it took a lot of prodding from me to get them to talk about it. My thesis in college, actually, because I studied history, was more of a historiography thesis, about how information gets into the public sphere. My thesis was about two museum exhibits at the Smithsonian. One, called A More Perfect Union, was a celebration of the bicentennial of the Constitution. It was really controversial because it actually celebrated the Constitution, by saying that this is where the Constitution failed its citizens, and it used the internment of the Japanese as an example. Then about six years later, curators from the Smithsonian tried to do an exhibit on the end of World War II-specifically, the choice to use nuclear bombs. It was completely squashed by veterans associations. So my thesis explored what history is allowed to go to the public and what’s kept quiet. I definitely have a printed copy of my paper somewhere. It’s on a floppy disk. This is how old this is. [laughs]

MOORE: Do you feel that that piece of your family’s past has had any bearing or influence on your work?

FUKUNAGA: Definitely. I don’t know how it comes out, but at least the way I look at the government and what the government did to my family… It takes the wool from your eyes about how the world works, to show you that nothing’s necessarily fair, and that you might have a hard life. I look at my grandparents, and they never complained their entire life, despite having that happen to them right in the prime of their life.