A scene at the documentary screening
The US Embassy in Ghana engaged the Ghanaian community on screening and discussion of the documentary, ‘The Paradox of Seabrook Farms,’ in Accra on Thursday, May 14, 2026, facilitated by Matthew Asada, Acting Public Affairs Officer, US Embassy Ghana.
The documentary film is about the workers at Seabrook Farms, the biggest industrial vegetables plant in the US in the 1950s who belonged to different nationalities and cultures, and who all had to build up a new life for their families in very difficult circumstances in Seabrook.
Following World War II, nearly 1,000 Estonians escaping Soviet occupation settled in Seabrook, finding employment and housing at the massive Seabrook Farms frozen food plant.
Workers were exploited, including over 2,500 Japanese Americans released from internment camps, European refugees, African Americans fleeing the Jim Crow South, and German POWs—endured grueling 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week, often for pennies an hour, and lived in cramped, industrial barracks.
Despite the harsh, hardscrabble conditions, the farm offered these displaced and oppressed people a tangible starting point in the United States. It served as a rare, unintended multicultural haven where different ethnic groups maintained cultural traditions, coexisted, and built new lives.
During the screening of the documentary, Matthew Asada recounted his memory of ‘The Paradox of Seabrook Farms,’ saying it was striking how the film showed Estonians reaching all these different groups of people now living in one very rural village.
“I think that’s interesting because we often associate diversity and cosmopolitanism with big cities, but it doesn’t have to be that way. This was a small village, and those people lived side by side. I was always impressed growing up as a kid. When we attended the Japanese traditional festival in the summer—the Obon festival—everyone came out for it. It wasn’t just Japanese Americans. As a biracial person with a white mother, I noticed it was often people who were simply interested in the culture, the food, the dance, and all the other aspects,” he stated.
BY Prince Fiifi Yorke