Strawberry Fields was filmed in Chicago, Illinois, and in California. It received funding from CPB, NEA and ITVS, and was completed in 1997. It premiered at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and was an Official Selection to the Venice Film Festival. It also screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival and won the Grand Prix at the Fukuoka Asian Film Festival. Film critic Roger Ebert called the film "... a moving piece of work." It was released on VHS and DVD by Vanguard Cinema.
The story of the film centers on Irene Kawai, a Japanese American teenager in Chicago in the 1970s who is haunted by a photo of her grandfather she never knew, standing by a barracks in a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans. Prompted by visits from the ghost of Terri, her dead baby sister, Irene journeys with her boyfriend, Luke, on a road trip to Arizona, where the Poston War Relocation Center once stood, and where the photo of her grandfather was taken.
