“So Long Asleep” chronicles the decades-long project of exhuming, memorializing, and finally repatriating the remains of 115 forced laborers from the Korean peninsula who died constructing the Uryu dam in Hokkaido, Japan. A project begun by Jodo Shinshu priest Yoshihiko Tonohira in the 1990s, it grew into a collaboration with Hanyang University anthropologist, social activist Byung-ho Chung, and Ritsumeikan University physical anthropologist Kichan Song into an ongoing excavation and workshop that brought students from Japan and South Korea together in an effort to excavate not only remains, but histories, and in so doing create a community of awareness and mutual respect among the participants in the workshops. The film is a lyrical and haunting meditation on the ideas of return and closure, one that sensitively and thoughtfully addresses war memory, restitution, and the creation of communities not only to preserve memories but also to learn from them.

Filmmaker David Plath, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has taught at the university for 35 years, published six books and more than 60 articles in anthropology and Japanese studies, and is perhaps best Anthropology established the David Plath Media Award, given biennially for the best new educational media project on Asian societies and cultures. In 2013, Prof. Plath received the Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies award from the Association for Asian Studies for his long engagement and many contributions to teaching about Japan at all levels and through many media.