Category Archives: Reviews

Allegiance, Fair Play Committee, Frank Emi, Heart Mountain, News, Reviews, Veterans

Resisters in crossfire between veterans and “Allegiance”

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Japanese American Veterans Association logoAs predicted, the use of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee to advance the plot of a new musical set in the camps is dredging up old misconceptions about the nature of the resistance. Submitted for your consideration: the second open letter about Allegiance that arrived today from the president of the Japanese American Veterans Association (download a printable PDF of “Setting the Record Straight: The Play ‘Allegiance'”).

We agreed with several of the concerns Gerald Yamada expressed in his first open letter of Sept. 10.  In this new letter he draws attention to what he calls “misleading” elements of the show, such as “misdirecting the blame away from government officials responsible for falsely imprisoning innocent persons” in the second act.

“The ‘light bulb’ revelation in the play that soldiers die in war does not make the 442nd RCT a suicide battalion,” he correctly notes, and concludes, “If the producers continue to try to convince audiences that Masaoka was a monster who duped Japanese Americans into serving in the 442nd RCT as a suicide battalion, the play is doomed to hit an iceberg of facts and history which do not support this.”

On the way to making these points based on facts and history, however, the writer buys into the same false distinctions between loyalty and disloyalty that were promoted by the JACL immediately after Pearl Harbor, and later codified and enforced by the administrators running the camps — false distinctions that incarcerees then internalized among themselves to divide volunteer from resister, draftee from renunciant, friend from foe. As the writer takes his verbal shots at the show’s belittlement of the veterans, he complains the show “over-romanticizes the story of the resisters.” The resisters suffer a kind of collateral damage, caught in this peculiar crossfire:

In the play, resisters are those who answer no to questions 27 and 28 and those who refused to be inducted, but they still appear to believe in America (emphasis added) … It would be unfair to conclude that all resisters wanted Japan to win the war … The important point is that the resisters were in the minority and that all those in that minority may not have been loyal to America as compared to all who volunteered to serve in the 442nd RCT.”

This regrettable but familiar innuendo drew a quick response from the friend who forwarded me the open letter:

“Why are folks still invoking the loyal/disloyal paradigm to discredit dissenters and resisters? That comment is a reminder of the racist labeling that government institutions like the Western Defense Command, the Department of Justice and the War Relocation Authority imposed on our community and used to silence dissent. Sadly, many Japanese Americans – like victims of Stockholm Syndrome where the prisoner identifies with the goals of their powerful captors – internalized and still use these stereotypical and divisive labels … (W)hy is it necessary to demonize the imprisoned Japanese American minority that had the “baka guts” to protest the injustice of their incarceration? … Isn’t it about time that we accept civil disobedience and dissent as a legitimate 100% American response to injustice?”

It’s unfortunate but like we said, the resisters get kicked around like this every so often. This time the dust-up is over a musical. Next year it will be something else.

Allegiance, DVD, Fair Play Committee, Frank Emi, George Takei, Heart Mountain, JACL, News, Reviews

Variety rips “Allegiance,” says what National JACL does not

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Variety logoLike the Los Angeles Times before it, the trade newspaper Variety has just posted what can only be described as a thumbs-down review of the new musical inspired by the clash of ideas between the Heart Mountain draft resisters who are the subject of our film, and the wartime Japanese American Citizens League:

“(W)hile the personal material lands, the political stuff lacks nuance and weight in “Allegiance.” Despite a handsome production and talent to spare, the writing would need considerable toughening up to withstand Broadway’s harsh glare …

“The sloganeering libretto … portrays both points of view as more or less reasonable until a last-minute, cheaply manipulative flip-flop tells us, out of left field, exactly what to think. In so doing, “Allegiance” comes dangerously close to branding every member of the honored 442nd regiment as fools and dupes, though the scribes don’t even seem to realize the thematic impact of their clumsy 11th hour reveal …

“(The songwriter) does seem to have played the “Les Miserables” cast album plenty …”

The Variety piece is important as it is the first objective industry review and will shape expectations among those in New York. And reviewer Bob Verini picks up on the same point raised in last month’s open letter from the Japanese American Veterans Association, in which President Gerald Yamada wrote:

“The play attempts to make the case that … those who volunteered were deceived by Masaoka and made the wrong choice.”

The JAVA letter and the Variety and Times reviews stand in sharp contrast to the Sept. 21st statement from the present-day Japanese American Citizens League. Given the show’s deriding of JACL’s wartime collaboration, its caricature of “Mike Masaoka” and its positioning of him as the antagonist of the piece, you would expect JACL to issue a ringing defense of itself and “they called me Moses” Masaoka.

Has JACL repudiated the legacy of Mike Masaoka?

Whether through lack of knowledge, a lack of interest, a desire not to offend, or a desire to distance itself from its past, National JACL issued a measured statement that labors to address a wide array of stakeholders and constituencies, and is calibrated to offend none of them.  (Download a printable PDF of the JACL statement, dated September 2012.) As we’ve said, for some it will be enough that a musical brings the subject of the camps to a new audience, and it’s there that JACL finds a toehold on which to actually commend the production.

JACL national officers with George Takei
JACL national officers with actor George Takei, on the Sept. 19 opening night of “Allegiance.”

But the statement goes on to neither confront its past or stick up for the legacy of its defining wartime leadership. Where the statement tip-toes towards criticism of the show, the repeated use of the passive voice allows the organization to avoid taking a clear and identifiable stand:

“As the confinement of the community lengthened with no access to due process, there was heated disagreement on the best response to the injustices perpetrated by the government …

“Although veterans and resisters are represented in the musical by fictional characters, it is unfortunate that writers have used Mike Masaoka’s name to represent those who promoted Americanism, and portray them in a negative light …

“Allegiance portrays the experiences of a single family at Heart Mountain, and focuses on one perspective of JACL and Mike Masaoka. Concerns remain that the musical pieces together different elements of Masaoka’s contributions during the period, and lacks the historical context to give audiences a broader sense of the external role of the government, press, politicians, military advisers, and others.”

Mike of course was the very face of the JACL’s brand of  Americanism, the author of the JACL Creed and the man who sang the praises of America, so it should come as no surprise that he is named to represent that. We named him in our film. But what is perhaps most significant in the statement is the absence of any rebuttal to the show’s climactic message that “Masaoka” somehow duped the protagonist, played by Mr. Takei, about the nature of the 442, “Go For Broke,” and the consequences of patriotic self-sacrifice — a disturbing message as pointed out by JAVA and Variety.

As Prof. Art Hansen pointed out over a gin martini on Friday, the JACL was unpopular before the war and in the first year of camp, as evidenced by the beating of JACLer Fred Tayama that led to the riot at Manzanar. On our DVD, Frank Emi recalls the pre-war JACL as”sort of an elite social club of lawyers and rich businessmen, things like that.”

But the group’s reputation turned around when Mike tied his star to the notion of restoring the draft for the Nisei as a first step toward the restoration of all their rights. That resonated with the thousands of young men who were itching for the chance to prove themselves, and JACL’s popularity was cemented as the dominant Japanese American political and social organization for the life of the Nisei generation, which sadly is fading into time.

The opening of the draft to the Nisei was as much a part of Mike’s legacy as his initial accommodations regarding the eviction, and for the modern-day JACL to fail to vigorously defend that is an omission that signals a sea change in the organization, whether intentional or not.

To be sure, it can’t be easy staffing a national organization that must bridge the gap between what we used to call the “old guard” and the younger members the group needs to attract and keep in order to survive — to try to function as a modern civil rights organization while lugging the history of a predecessor who waived Japanese American rights at the time when we needed them the most.

Next up: a review of the text (and subtext) of Allegiance, as frozen for the San Diego production, that expands upon the “lack of historical context” cited by JACL.

Allegiance, Fair Play Committee, George Takei, Heart Mountain, JACL, Mike Masaoka, News, Reviews

L.A. Times review critical of “Allegiance”

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Opening night at The Old Globe Theater
First-nighters await the opening curtain for “Allegiance.” Nice set.

The first reviews have come in from the press opening for Allegiance. As expected, the San Diego Union-Tribune and the North County Times are carried off by the emotion of melodrama (“bring your Kleenex, you’re going to need it,” one says with glee). However, the review by Anne Marie Welsh in the Los Angeles Times, “‘Allegiance’ gives Japanese internment a soft focus,” is especially clear-eyed about the material itself:

The musical premieres at the Old Globe as a mild story of broken family ties, not a judgment of U.S. mistakes related to the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s. … “Allegiance” presents a surprisingly mild story of family fractures, not an indictment of American failures. … Though peppered with promising scenes and powerfully sung by the largely Asian American cast, “Allegiance” retreats from the challenge of its own material and hasn’t found a consistent focus, tone or musical idiom. For all its historical reach and welcome significance, the book (by Marc Acito, Jay Kuo and Lorenzo Thione) drifts into two generic romances and in the second act meanders into sentimental warblings that family is “what really matters.” … Mike Masaoka (Paolo Montalban), head of the Japanese American Citizens League, the show’s sole historical figure, (is) here caricatured. … (T)heir show needs a sharper emotional focus and musical edge to match its bold subject.

There may be a reason for the fuzziness of the show’s focus. Whatever artistic aspirations they may have, Broadway shows are by their nature commercial ventures: they have to sell the tickets week to week to pay the cast and keep the doors open. Based on the show’s synopsis, video clips, and reports from preview audiences and first-nighter’s, the dramatic arc of this show appears calculated to shift the audience’s attention away from the actions of the U.S. government — the general who lied about military necessity, the army major who was the architect of mass eviction and incarceration — and onto a straw man: the show’s caricature of “Mike Masaoka.”

Make no mistake,  the real Mike and the real JACL bear plenty of responsibility for waiving Japanese American rights at the height of war and racial hysteria, and Mike in particular for acting as a confidential informant for the government (see the evidence on the DVD extended interview with Prof. Roger Daniels).

But by setting up Masaoka as the antagonist of the piece, the show gets to take the focus off wartime America’s responsibility for accepting the mass eviction and incarceration, lest the predominantly white New York theater audience for whom this work is intended squirm in their seats – especially in a city just 11 years removed from its own 21st century experience of a Pearl Harbor.

From all accounts the focus on Mike as the villain has the emotional effect, intended or unintended, of letting the government off the hook, as if to say, “Look at Mike, he was the culprit, not the generals or the bureaucrats.”

This portrayal was especially strong in early drafts of the musical’s script, and the alarms went up after community pre-screenings of a videotaped workshop performance. However, the creators brought in a new collaborator to rewrite the book, and a first-nighter who provided the two photos offers this contrary view:

“(A friend) who had not seen the pre-screenings came away a bit shocked at how he (Mike) was portrayed. This was her first time to see the show, so she had nothing to compare it to.  So I think she was surprised by the musical portraying Mike Masaoka in such a negative light. In the end, we see George yelling at the spirit of Masaoka “You son of a bitch!”… Wow…

“It is interesting -I have seen the pre-screenings so I came away thinking the representation of Mike Masaoka is much more balanced now. He is not the villain as originally scripted. In fact, at times he appears very uncertain, almost meek and indecisive. He is now a 26-year old thrust into all of this pressure and a bit unsure of what to do, trying to lead his people. We see him in uniform – grieving for his brother – trying to figure out what to do and sometimes struggling to remain strong.

“But at the end when the show suggests it was Mike that had the idea for a suicide battalion and George calls him an SOB, then I think it really leaves a sour taste in people’s mouths.  For me, since I had seen the earlier versions which were so bad, this current version is ironically very refreshing…”

DVD in gift shop
Shameless plug alert: The DVD that tells the real story of Frank Emi and the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee is available at The Old Globe gift shop.

More reaction is expected in the days ahead, so subscribe to new posts using the box in the column above and to the right, or leave your comment below. (Our DVD is now available in the Old Globe gift shop. Yes, next to the Lea Salonga CDs. Proving, as Brian Wilson sings on the Beach Boys reunion CD, that it’s a strange world after all.)

Allegiance, DVD, Fair Play Committee, Frank Emi, George Takei, Heart Mountain, JACL, Mike Masaoka, News, Reviews, Teachers, Veterans

Resisters at heart of new musical

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Allegiance photoLike it or not, the history and legacy of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee is being dramatized and will be kicked around in the media for weeks and months to come. The vehicle for the uproar is a new musical with Broadway aspirations that appropriates the story of the resisters and puts them on stage against the Japanese American Citizens League and the real-life Mike Masaoka.

That’s the story first revealed to a national television audience by Conscience and the Constitution, and it informs the framework of Allegiance. Several years ago the songwriter and co-producer contacted us to ask for a copy of our film for a theater workshop. We obliged by sending a VHS tape, and heard nothing more until recently.

At Resisters.com we will always appreciate George Takei for his two decades of support for the Heart Mountain resisters — from his volunteering to read the part of Frank Emi at our first resisters homecoming / readers theater event in San Jose in 1992 (sadly but understandably losing him to a paying film gig), to his later lending his voice talents to our film to read the manifesto of Frank Emi and an editorial from James Omura. With his massive following and two-million Facebook friends, George is emerging as our lead advocate for getting mention of the resisters into the mass culture, as evidenced by this NPR interview over the Labor Day weekend where he expresses his admiration for the resisters and what he correctly characterizes as their “courageous and principled stand.”

While audiences may only remember the performances, musical arrangements and stagecraft, and whatever the intentions of the creative team, the risk of staging this material is that even as Japanese Americans appreciate this history being exposed to a wider audience, there are many ways for them to take offense at the way this one is told:

  • The JACL — Where our documentary lets Masaoka’s words and deeds speak for themselves, the musical puts Mike on stage as a living person, by name, and that’s a different animal. The emotional arc of the stage play sets up Mike as the villain of the piece. In early drafts, and in a YouTube video, “Mike Masaoka” is portrayed as a “scheming vaudevillian,” to use the words in the video caption.For all his rhetoric and bluster, Mike didn’t create the camps, or the draft, nor did he have the authority to stop the drafting of young men into the 442. The government did. JACLers are up in arms, though the organization so far has been silent.
  • The veterans — With the show appearing to champion those who resisted over those who enlisted or complied with the draft in camp, the stage was set for pushback. The first shot was fired by Charles Kobayashi and others in Sacramento in a letter reacting to a community preview: “The dialogue in Allegiance where Sam Omura tells his father he wished he had never volunteered for the 442nd needs to be removed. It is demeaning and disrespectful of the Nisei veterans.” Another of Kobayashi’s complaints however is easily dismissed: artists have no obligation to “uplift the race,” as it were.
  • The resisters — I can only wonder what Frank Emi would say if he were still alive. The show in earlier drafts had the lead resister, called by the diminuitive “Frankie,” exhorting crowds in camp to resist, under a banner that proclaims “Resist!” Frank would tell you that is a conflation with the washo-washo cries at the Tule Lake Segregation Center. The draft resisters at Heart Mountain never publicly rallied or raised banners. That would have invited sure arrest, and confusing their methods with those of the Tule Lake no-no’s and renunciants was precisely the thing that Frank Emi insisted the group avoid. It’s not just a technicality.The Fair Play Committee was organized around a principle to which they hoped to attract support. Frank Emi made it clear they would not pressure anyone to join the Fair Play Committee or to resist the draft, in order to avoid a federal conspiracy or sedition charge. They studiously limited their activities to offering legal advice to those who asked for it, quietly posting fliers throughout camp, and holding public meetings in the mess hall. To show them rallying under a banner alters the fundamental nature of the Fair Play Committee’s stand. It feeds into the stereotype of “agitators” and “troublemakers” that has dogged the FPC for 70 years.

Murmuring about the content of Allegiance has simmered all summer, based on a series of community previews, clips on YouTube,  and a glimpse of an early version of the script, as reported last month by J.K. Yamamoto in the Rafu Shimpo.

The murmuring finally burst into the open today with release of this from the president of the Japanese American Veterans Association (you can download a PDF of the letter here).

Open Letter about “Allegiance”

The play “Allegiance” is scheduled to open in San Diego, CA, on September 19th.  The producers of the play have received criticism about a pre-opening version of the play and they may make some changes before opening.  However, we understand that they do not intend to change the play’s characterization of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), Mike Masaoka, who was National JACL Secretary at the time Executive Order 9066 was issued, and the Nisei soldiers.  Thus, in our opinion, the play’s plot is objectionable in that it misleads the American public and is a disservice to the Japanese American community.  The comments in this letter are based on a review of a pre-opening version of the play.

The play tells how two groups showed their loyalty to the United States during World War II.  In telling their stories, the play pits those who volunteered to serve in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team against the”resisters” (aka “No-No boys” and draft resisters).  The play also implies that JACL and Masaoka colluded with the government in shaping various governmental policies.  These policies related to the forced evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry, Question 27 and Question 28 in the loyalty questionnaire, segregation of “resisters” in Tule Lake WRA camp, and misleading Japanese Americans into volunteering for military service.

First, the play gives the false impression to the American public that the evacuation and unjust imprisonment of persons of Japanese ancestry would not have happened but for the aid provided by JACL and Mike Masaoka.  In reality, JACL and Masaoka had no ability to influence Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Army to evacuate persons of Japanese ancestry from the western United States.  They should be applauded for their efforts to minimize the pain and harshness of the Executive Order’s implementation during a time of war hysteria and within a culture of hostile and deceitful governmental officials.

Moreover, the play makes no mention of the actions of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed Executive Order 9066, and LTG John DeWitt, who implemented Executive Order 9066.  These actions were later found to be the result of “prejudice, war hysteria, and lack of political leadership.”

Rather, the play would mislead the American public by attributing
unsubstantiated actions to Japanese American leaders who were attempting to bring reason to absolute chaos confronting the community.  The play appears to be pandering to the American public with the implicit message: “We don’t blame the government for what happened to us during World War II.  JACL and Masaoka did this to us.”

What happened to persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II was overt racial profiling. The lesson learned from that experience is that we must guard against racially motivated governmental policies.  This play, “Allegiance,” only serves to dilute or confuse the lesson that the American public should take away from the sacrifices and suffering of those who bore the unjust effects of Executive Order 9066.

Furthermore, there is no question that there was an angry division in 1943 within the Japanese American community between those who volunteered to serve and “resisters” on the matter of loyalty.  The play attempts to make the case that the “resisters” made the right choice and that those who volunteered were deceived by Masaoka and made the wrong choice.  By fueling this controversy, the play attempts to re-open old wounds and does a disservice to both groups.

Both choices were difficult and had permanent life-altering consequences. In hindsight, both groups should recognize that there was more than one way to show one’s loyalty.  Neither choice was the right one or the wrong one. Today, we should celebrate both groups for following their convictions rather than fueling this hostility by continuing to pit these two groups against each other.

Finally, the play uses fictional characters except for Mike Masaoka. The play assaults his good name and reputation by alleging his direct involvement in shaping the government’s controversial policies.  Let us hope that the play’s producers and investors can substantiate their apparent character assassination of Masaoka.  We will leave it to Mike Masaoka & Associates, a consulting firm that continues to do business in Washington, DC, to raise any challenges related to possibly malicious damage to its business reputation caused by “Allegiance.”

Sincerely,

Gerald Yamada
JAVA President

A couple of things are worth nothing about this letter. It signals we’re in for another round of confusing the resisters at Heart Mountain with the no-no’s at Tule Lake. The resisters were not “angrily divided” against the boys who served; they always said they made their choice and the volunteers made theirs. The resisters always recognized there was more than one way to show one’s loyalty; it was the veterans groups and JACL that took 60 or 70 years to come around. What’s notable is the degree to which the two letters above acknowledge the civil disobedience as a legitimate response.

Yamada’s challenge that the producers document their characterization of Masaoka was evidently anticipated by their reposting on their site of Mike’s 1942 and 1943 memoes to the WRA, the color scans of which were downloaded uncredited from our site, Resisters.com, along with several photos of Mike and the HTML code that William Hohri created for us for posting of the uncensored Lim Report. Having said that, and to show how many conflicting interests are at play, we do appreciate the link to our PBS. org site and to the DVD ordering page and hope they remain.

Previews for the show began last Friday. Opening night is Wednesday, September 19, and the all-important trade reviews will come in soon after that. More as this story develops.

DVD, Heart Mountain, JACL, Reviews, Teachers

DVD review by John Streamas

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John Streamas is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at Washington State University in Pullman. His book, Japanese Americans and Cultures of Effacement, is forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press.

On Conscience and the Constitution, Two-Disc Collector’s Edition

Shortly after I met her in 1995, poet Toyo Suyemoto advised me never to join the Japanese American Citizens League.

She was still bitter, a half-century after the war, over the JACL’s presuming to speak for all Japanese Americans, as it urged them gladly to comply with government orders to evacuate their homes and enter concentration camps in barren, hostile places in the desert. At the time of her own evacuation, Toyo was a young mother whose husband had abandoned her and their infant son Kay. She and Kay left for camp with her parents and siblings, and they would all leave after the war for new homes in Ohio.

In the late 1950s Kay, who should have been a hearty teenager, died of illnesses induced by the harsh conditions of camp. All her life, Toyo wrote about her camp experience, and her poems, though seemingly serene descriptions of the Utah desert where she was imprisoned, are full of underlying despair, rage, and hope. Late in life she spoke before high school and college audiences about her wartime experience, and with energetic humor she urged them to fight back against institutional oppression, warning that only constant vigilance can hope to resist racism.

In the 1970s novelist Frank Chin and his literary circle helped the world rediscover Toyo’s poems, seeing in her life and work a feisty resistance of the sort they also saw in Frank Emi and the Fair Play Committee, young men in the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming who resisted the military conscription that became possible during Japanese Americans’ incarceration.

Toyo had read the wartime editorials of James Omura, and was aware of the Heart Mountain resisters. The JACL urged the community to prove their loyalty by becoming part of the military effort, but Emi and the others, supported by Denver journalist James Omura, refused, insisting that their constitutional rights must first be restored before they would consider service.

The resisters’ refusal and subsequent trial was for decades a “dirty secret” of Japanese American history, as the JACL continued to presume to speak for the community. The story of these resisters forms the core of Frank Abe’s 2000 film Conscience and the Constitution, which was broadcast on PBS and which has surely done more than any other film or book to tell it from their perspective.

Now the film is reissued with new material. This is no gimmicky “director’s cut” with twenty additional minutes that amount to a vanity project. The core film remains, but Abe adds to the discs – of which there are now two, one of them dedicated exclusively to additional material – extended interviews with people featured in the film, footage from the 2002 event in which the JACL publicly and formally apologized to the resisters, and access to a helpful viewers’ guide.

In the film itself, historian Roger Daniels reminds audiences that history is written by the winners, and observes that in postwar Japanese America those winners have been the JACL, who have dictated how even a civil rights-era nation might read the incarceration – until now when, thanks to Abe and other activists such as Chin and historian Michi Weglyn, the suppressed narratives are finally surfacing.

The material in Abe’s new edition reinforces Daniels’s caution about the JACL version of history. More than a century ago, African American writer W. E. B. DuBois argued that the black American develops a “double consciousness,” one for engaging with whites, the other for living in the home community. History for all communities of color can be understood as existing on two planes. Most Americans know little about Japanese Americans’ imprisonment during the war, and so the historian’s first job is to teach that history. On this plane, the U.S. government reduced all Japanese Americans to potential saboteurs, a threat serious enough to warrant mass incarceration. On the other, interior plane, the JACL reduced them all to good Americans happy to prove their loyalty, even if at the price of incarceration; but, on this plane, they were not reducible, as some complied while others despaired and still others fought back. But the resisters fought two foes, the uncomprehending government and the capitulating JACL.

The focus of Abe’s feature film is to tell the story on both planes, focusing on the outer plane, the general history for audiences unaware even of the incarceration. The focus of the new material is the inner plane, the suppressed history of resistance’s consequences.

Most valuable, perhaps, are comments by Frank Emi, a core organizer of the Fair Play Committee. Emi acknowledges the JACL’s formal apology, but he also refers to the “unholy ghosts” of the organization’s past: During the war it willfully kept the government informed of resisters’ actions, and after the war it ostracized them, drove them out of community life. These ghosts must also be atoned for, says Emi.

Lest squeamish Japanese Americans worry that the new edition of Abe’s film package threatens to air the community’s dirty laundry, let it be remembered that the federal government acknowledged in 1988 that the wartime incarceration was not only wrong but even deserving of symbolic restitution – a fact that implicitly repudiates the JACL’s wartime position. During the war, Japanese Americans’ only enemy should have been institutional racism, not neighbors working as snitches for the racists.

Abe’s new material clearly shows the consequences of both complicity and resistance, and, maybe even more importantly, it celebrates the courage of those young men who resisted not only the government but even their community’s own weak leaders.

My old friend Toyo was proud of the resisters and, had she lived to see this film and its supplementary material, she would have been proud of Frank Abe.

                                          — John Streamas

DVD, News, Reviews

Newspaper cover story

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cover of Northwest Asian WeeklyI admit was floored when I saw the Northwest Asian Weekly put its review of our DVD on the front page this week. I mean, I was glad to talk to their correspondent, Andrew Hamlin, but not this. Editor Stacy Nguyen didn’t think so either, at first, but she read the piece and thought it was a great story. So she put it up there.

Regarding the reference in the piece to anti-war movements of the 1960s, I hope readers don’t come away with the notion that the Heart Mountain draft resisters were in any way pacifists or somehow reluctant to fight in WW2. These were guys who said they would be glad to fight – just as soon as their rights were first restored and their families released from camp. And the proof of that is that some of the guys who served time in prison for refusing to be drafted from inside a concentration camp, later gladly reported for duty, as free Americans, when drafted into service for the Korean War.

Incidentally, the DVD will be back in stock early this week at Kinokuniya Books at Uwajimaya in Seattle. Thanks for those who have asked for it there, it helps keep the bookstore interested in carrying Japanese American material. If you can’t make it there, it’s also available here.

DVD, News, Reviews, Screenings

DVD review in International Examiner and preview of Seattle screening

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Wing Luke Museum logo Thanks to Moira Macdonald of The Seattle Times for highlighting in her column in the “Movietimes” section our first public screening of the new Two-Disc Collector’s Edition DVD of “Conscience and the Constitution.” And thanks to those who have RSVP’d on Facebook. No reservation or ticket needed. Just come by the Wing Luke Asian Museum in the Tateuchi Story Theater, 719 South King Street, Seattle, on Saturday, Feb. 18 at 1:00 p.m. Producer Frank Abe will screen the film and debut a new DVD featurette, “The JACL Apologizes,” on events that occurred after the film’s release, answer questions, and sign DVD’s.

Also in Seattle, see the new review in the International Examiner. Having read the paper for decades, it’s an honor to be included in the IE Arts section edited by poet and greengrocer Alan Lau. This review from Chizu Omori is among the most detailed yet. Looks great online but the article is truly impressive in print, pick up the paper if you can.

Finally, this Saturday, Feb. 11, Seattle University is hosting the The 25th Anniversary of the United States v. Hirabayashi Coram Nobis Case: Its Meaning Then and Its Relevance Now, with a lineup starting with Tom Ikeda and Peter Irons and ending with the Sansei attorneys on the legal team. Should be quite a reunion with old friends.

Fair Play Committee, Reviews

Book: “American Nikkei Nisei Draft Resistance,” by Prof. Yukio Morita

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book coverI paid a visit in August to Mits Koshiyama in San Jose and he was just in receipt of a new book published in Japan about the Nisei draft resisters, America Nikkei Nisei no Chohei Kihi (American Nikkei Nisei Draft Resistance). The author is Professor Yukio Morita.

Mit’s wife translated the cover blurb for me as reading something like: “They were called into the army, but they refused to go!” and on the obi strip: “Voices of the Nikkei who lost their property taken by the government!”

Prof. Morita includes the Guntaro Kubota translation into Japanese of a Fair Play Committee bulletin that is briefly glimpsed in Conscience, along with photos of Mits’ family, Frank Emi, George Nozawa, and a Hawaiian draft resister who wanted to renounce his citizenship.

Kenji Taguma, English Edition Editor of the Nichi Bei Times, wrote a story, “New Book Brings Little-Known Story of Nisei Resistance to Japanese Readers,” and is moderating a book talk with Prof. Morita  (who will be speaking in Japanese) and Nisei draft resisters Ken Yoshida and Mits Koshiyama. Kenji’s personal note tells the story:

This 600+ page book, published by Sairyusha Publishing Co. in Tokyo, is the first original Japanese language book solely dedicated to Nisei draft resistance. The back cover has an image of Frank Emi, and there are historical and contemporary photos interspersed throughout.

Professor Morita started interviewing Nisei resisters about five years ago, and the book includes results of interviews with folks like Frank Emi, Mits Koshiyama, George Nozawa, Jim Akutsu, Poston resisters, and the “Tucsconians” — resisters who were sentenced to the same federal labor camp as Gordon Hirabayashi. This latter group included my father Noboru, Joe Norikane and Susumu Yenokida of Granada (Amache), and Ken Yoshida (Topaz or Central Utah). There’s also a chapter on James Omura. I believe that this is the first book to include Granada and other resisters since Ellen Levine’s A Fence Away From Freedom.

As the son of a Nisei resister, I’m forever grateful to those of you who have helped to bring out this story. Frank Abe’s Conscience and the Constitution, Chizu Omori’s Rabbit in the Moon, and Eric Muller’s Free to Die For Their Country brought the story out to a wide audience. Hopefully, Prof. Morita’s book will bring the story to a new audience, in Japan and to Japanese-speakers here in America.

As you can imagine, his actual paying audience must be rather limited, and the small press probably has no marketing capabilities here. So, if you have any access to any library with a Japanese-language collection, I’m sure it would be appreciated if they are encouraged to purchase a copy. The book costs 7,200 yen, which is about $61 today. I actually have about 15 copies here that the publisher sent on Prof. Morita’s behalf, which Prof. Morita plans to sell at the event. If anyone can make the book event on Nov. 3, I can look into trying to set up some type of meal gathering.

News, Reviews

“Japan Focus” online journal

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Japan Focus logoAn online journal called Japan Focus (“regional and global perspectives on politics, economics, society, history & culture”) has posted a new article that references our film and draws some material from our PBS Online site and this one, including our photos of Frank Emi in camp and Mits Koshiyama in court.

“Japanese-American Incarceration Resistance Narratives, and the Post 9/11 Era” opens with a quote from James Omura and examines our film and Satsuki Ina’s remarkable From A Silk Cocoon in the context of “fifty years of Japanese American counternarratives challenging prevailing views about the incarceration experience.”

Author Jean Miyake Downey says:

“Many thanks for your inspiration and sharing news of inspiring resisters during this time when we need to speak out again… My background is in the African American Civil Rights Movement/Solidarity Movement in Poland (nonviolent social change movements) and, growing up in the 1970’s and not graduating from law school until 1988, in Florida, I bought the official versions of the incarceration, even though they smacked “false” to me.

“Before the age of internet, I remember seeing very little about the redress movement and Civil Liberties Act in the paper, and the takes were spinned, to minimize important aspects of the history. Of course, I knew about Fred Korematsu, but nothing about the FPC and other protesters.”

Frank Chin also sent a 29-page script for what looks to be a proposed staged reading involving himself and the Heart Mountain resisters:

“Here’s a piece linking the camp resistance that began with Hirababyashi, the draft resisters and Ehren Watada.”

The script is titled “CITIZENS DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUTION: THE JAPANESE AMERICAN RESISTANCE TO CAMPS OF 1942 to THE RESISTANCE OF LT. EHREN WATADA OF 2006.”

Read it online, unedited, as a PDF document.

Heart Mountain, News, Reviews, Teachers

Op-ed by high schooler based upon viewing of our film

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An eventful Day of Remembrance just past. The Fresno Bee on Feb. 19 published an op-ed from 16-year old Marissa Honda, an insightful piece in which she speaks of her faith in her generation to remember the legacy of the draft resisters, in contrast to her older relatives who lived through those times:

I can tell by their shifty eyes and serious expressions that many of them still feel embarrassed by those who might have been seen as disloyal Americans. It is as if by supporting the resisters after 50 years, they still fear being labelled as disloyal Americans themselves.

It’s a remarkable piece, inspired in part from a viewing of our film. You can read “Japanese draft resisters deserve better,” as a 1MB PDF file to see how it looked in the paper. Renews one’s hope for the future.