Tag Archives: Frank Emi

“Kiyoshi Okamoto and the Four Franks”

Tak Hoshizaki
Tak Hoshizaki at the “Standing on Principle” panel, July 6, 2013. Photo by Tracy Kumono Photography.

Tak Hoshizaki is one of the few surviving Heart Mountain resisters who continues to speak in public. At the Japanese American National Museum national conference on July 6, in a panel called “Standing on Principle,” Tak shared his first-hand account of the growing Fair Play Committee movement at Heart Mountain in 1944, and we thank him for allowing us to share it with you:

“KIYOSHI OKAMOTO AND THE FOUR FRANKS”

Kiyoshi Okamoto

“Fair play, fair play, civil rights, fair play” was what Kiyoshi Okamoto was saying as he talked to anyone who would listen in the cold, windy Wyoming concentration camp. Ten-thousand Japanese, most of them American citizens, held in a concentration camp in a desolate part of Wyoming, had little understanding of how their civil rights were violated. Kiyoshi was trying to tell the inmates that the United States government, their country, had wrongly imprisoned them. As he spoke to small groups, Kiyoshi called himself the “Fair Play Committee of One.”

In the winter of 1942-43, the Army came into Heart Mountain to recruit volunteers. This was the same time the infamous loyalty questionnaire with question 27 and 28 was being debated.

Frank Inouye

We now meet the first “Frank,” Frank Inouye. At the recruiting meeting, after the Army’s presentation, Inouye presented a manifesto demanding the U. S. government restore the rights of the men before drafting them. As a result, the Heart Mountain Congress of American Citizens was formed, represented by 2 people from each block. Inouye became the chairman. Before the Congress of American Citizens had time to develop, Inouye was able to leave the camp. With Inouye gone, the congress eventually evolved into the Fair Play Committee.

As a side note, Inouye later became a professor and an administrator at the University of Hawaii. He also was the main driving force who developed the University of Hawaii campus at Hilo. A few years ago, the University of Hawaii had a dedication and recognition for Frank Inouye’s efforts that brought about the existence of the Hilo branch. Frank Inouye passed away a few years ago.

Frank Emi

We now meet the second “Frank,” Frank Emi. Emi became one of the leaders of the Fair Play Committee. Emi played a major role in the Fair Play Committee conflicts with the camp administrators.

Emi at this time was married and had a family. He was not eligible for the draft. Again like Inouye, Emi also believed that before drafting the men, their full citizenship rights be restored.

The Fair Play Committee of One became the Fair Play Committee of Many. With Frank Inouye gone, the former members of the Congress of American Citizens joined together with Kiyoshi Okamoto, Frank Emi and others to form the Fair Play Committee. The Fair Play Committee began holding meetings, discussing the questionnaire and the draft. I attended a meeting and was surprised at the wall to wall attendance. The plan was to have our civil rights returned before we would serve. Also was surprised that I was not alone in my thinking of not answering the draft call.

By this time 1943-44, I was of draft age. When I entered the Pomona Assembly Center I was 16, not very good in history and English, understood very little of the Constitution of the United States let alone an understanding of civil rights. It was there in the Pomona Assembly Center as I listened to the older Nisei talk, I learned about how we should have contested “Evacuation” by legal action. How we were betrayed by “JACL.” The Japanese American Citizens League. Who were they? How did JACL have a role? I began to realize that something was wrong. When I heard of the financial losses of many families, and that families were broken apart by the arrest, removal and detention of their fathers, I realized more than ever, our removal was wrong. While in Pomona I wrote to my homeroom teacher at Belmont High School. The letter expressed my very bitter feelings of what had happened. She answered she was sorry that I felt so angry.

Now two years later, I had decided that I would not go if called. A few weeks later I received my draft notice. I did not appear for my physical. I continued to work at the camp engineering office. One of the nisei workers approached me and told me an administrator’s son was killed by the Japanese. The nisei worker suggested that I not work there anymore to ease the pain of his loss. I stopped working.

A few days later I was picked up early in the morning. There were 63 of us. The largest Selective Service trial on record. We hoped that the publicity of the trial would help in the return of our civil rights, release from camps and return to our homes, our neighborhood.

We, the 63, decided for a trial by a judge only. The idea was that with the war on, members selected for a jury would not be sympathetic to us. A big mistake. In his book Free to Die for Their Country, Eric Muller describes the presiding judge as a racist. Strike three. In the trial, failure to report for the draft was only considered. The fact that we were being drafted from a concentration camp was not brought up. Only that we had broken the Selective Service Act. We were found guilty and given a 3 year sentence to serve in a Federal Penitentiary.

The leaders of the Fair Play Committee were later arrested, found guilty of conspiracy to violate the Selective Service Act and sentenced to 4 years in the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. They appealed the sentence and won. They served about 18 months. In 1947, President Truman pardoned all the Nisei draft resisters. All of us, the Fair Play Committee members and the resisters, now had our full citizenship back. The records of our imprisonment erased. We were now regular citizens.

We all returned to civilian life, going back to school or going to work, putting aside our thoughts of these experience. Except for Emi. Frank Emi gave talks before groups and at various universities telling the story of the Fair Play Committee and the draft resistance at Heart Mountain. News media and the Japanese American community gave little note and eventually swept the story “under the rug,” giving little mention of the resistance. We were written out of the Japanese American history. Our story of draft resistance to regain our civil rights buried and forgotten.

I continued my education and was studying for my master’s degree at UCLA when the Korean Conflict started. I was young enough and soon found myself drafted and in the Army. I personally know of five other Heart Mountain resisters who like myself later served. The age limit was 28 so only the youngest of the resisters were still eligible for the draft. We had our civil rights returned, our families were now out of the concentration camps. As we stated as our stand during the trial, give back our civil rights and release our families and we will gladly serve.

The story of the Fair Play Committee was seldom if ever mentioned in the vernacular papers, let alone the regular press. The exploits of the 442 were broadly and repeatedly publicized and rightly so. The Fair Play Committee was now a forbidden topic. Swept under the rug. Written out of history. The resisters, we were the bad guys.

Frank Chin

We now meet the third “Frank.” Frank Chin, a Chinese American, an outspoken playwright, novelist, and writer. Chin apparently discovered / uncovered the story of the Fair Play Committee and the Heart Mountain draft resisters and wrote in his typical manner about the Fair Play Committee and the resisters. Chin obtained copies of reports and documents on Heart Mountain, those that were written by the administrators. Chin published “The Organized Resistance” in the annual special edition of the Rafu Shimpo in December of 1981. Chin wrote a very in-detail, documented history of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee.

With this story, Chin was instrumental in bringing to light the resister story. Chin’s exposé answered the question put forth by the younger Japanese Americans, “Why didn’t you resist?” We did resist but our actions were never told. Chin has supported and written much on the resister’s story.

Frank Abe

Now we meet our fourth “Frank,” Frank Abe. Frank had also wondered, “Why didn’t you resist?” When Abe learned about the resisters, he set out on a long 20-year plus journey that culminated in the famous documentary film Conscience and the Constitution. He spent many hours tracking down and interviewing the surviving resisters. Abe’s question for the Japanese Americans now is, “Why did you turn your back on those who resisted?”

We are now meeting in Seattle, Frank Abe’s present home town. Thank you all for being here and for your kind attention. Kokoro kara.

Thanks again to Tak Hoshizaki for sharing his remarks. He’s been quoted in a few books about the resistance, but we hope he continues to write about the FPC in his own words.

“Films of Remembrance” to feature DVD featurette

Floyd Mori at JACL apology ceremony
Floyd Mori at JACL apology ceremony

One of the featurettes on our new DVD, “The JACL Apologizes,” will screen in San Francisco Japantown on Monday, Feb. 18 as part of this year’s, “Films of Remembrance.”

It’s a one-day film series held in conjunction with the Bay Area Day of Remembrance, commemorating the 71st anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, which set the wheels in motion to forcibly relocate some 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry into American concentration camps during World War II.  Our piece caps off the day’s program, which ends with this description:

5:30 p.m. “A Divided Community: Three Personal Stories of Resistance” (2012, 73 min.) This documentary by Momo Yashima highlights the struggles of three Japanese American World War II resisters — Yosh Kuromiya, Frank Emi and Mits Koshiyama — who challenged the U.S. government’s decision to draft Japanese Americans while they and their families were being held in America’s concentration camps.

Followed by “The JACL Apologizes” by Frank Abe, from the DVD “Conscience and the Constitution.”

The screenings are at Nihonmachi Little Friends, 1830 Sutter St. (near Buchanan) in San Francisco Japantown. The event is sponsored by the Bay Area Day of Remembrance Consortium, the Nichi Bei Weekly and the National Japanese American Historical Society.  Free admission, though they’d welcome donations. Thanks to Kenji Taguma for including our piece in the series.

Resisters honored on Fred Korematsu Day in San Francisco

Korematsu heroes graphicThe Heart Mountain resisters, under the heading of “Internment Dissenters,” will be among 16 individuals and groups honored in San Francisco this Sunday at the third annual Fred Korematsu Day celebration. Thanks to the organizers for linking to this site for information about the resisters and, for the short film to be screened at the event, thanks for using two of the stills from our film: the shot of Frank Emi in camp with grocer Kozie Sakai, and the iconic courtroom photo of the 63 resisters on trial in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education is a program of the Asian Law Caucus, which was co-founded by longtime supporter and civil rights lawyer Dale Minami. The event is this Sunday, January 27, 2:30-4:30pm, at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco on 401 Van Ness Ave.

In what is billed as “a historic gathering of civil rights heroes and the descendants of heroes who have passed on,” the Nisei draft resisters are sixth on a list of 16 American civil rights heroes who organizers say have been long overlooked:

#6. INTERNMENT DISSENTERS: “No-Nos,” draft resisters and renunciants who challenged the WWII incarceration and mistreatment of Japanese Americans. ‘No-No’ Hiroshi Kashiwagi will represent this honoree group at the event.

The video to be shown is described as a 2-minute short produced by filmmaker Winnie Wong, who interviewed Hiroshi for it  She hopes to be able to share a Vimeo link at some point. The Institute’s Education Coordinator, Tim Huey, writes:

We are offering 2 free VIP tickets to each living member of our honoree groups. So, for those that are a Filipino WWII veteran, Japanese American WWII veteran, Internment Dissenter (draft resister, No-No, renunciant), or Dollar Store Striker that wish to attend, have them call us at 415-848-7737 to request complimentary tickets or email [email protected]. At this point resister Jimi Yamaichi plans on coming, as well as No-No Jim Tanimoto. We’d love to have more dissenters attend if they are able.

Korematsu teaching kitThe 16 Heroes are all featured on an educational poster that is going into our teaching kits that are sent for free to educators across the country. We’ll be unveiling the poster at the event. More information on the teaching kits can be found on our website. Most of the materials can be downloaded for instant gratification, but for those desiring a physical kit, they simply have to fill out a basic online form to request them.

Tickets for the event are available for purchase. And again,  Japanese American draft resisters, renunciants, and no-no boys are among those who can get free VIP tickets.

Korematsu heroes program

A Heart Mountain resister reacts to “Allegiance”

The following was written at the request of the Rafu Shimpo newspaper, and appears in today’s Oct. 24 edition:

Kirk and Spock in 1920s guise
“A Piece of the Action?” – parallel universe only looks like the real thing
© 1968 Paramount Pictures

There is an episode of Star Trek in which aliens build an entire culture around a book about Chicago mobsters of the 1920s. The aliens recreate the guns, the clothes and the lingo, but it’s just a guess based on what they see in the book. The new musical Allegiance, now playing at The Old Globe in San Diego, feels a little like that, with its creators studying books, photos and websites to come up with an alternate reality for the Japanese American incarceration – one that looks like the real thing but is governed by different rules.

In the parallel world of Allegiance, the sound of bullhorns herds inmates around, female arrivals are forced to strip to their underwear at gunpoint, and military guards bearing rifles fixed with bayonets roam inside the confines of camp on an apparently daily basis – shoving unruly inmates to the ground, firing warning shots into the air to restore order, and taking more deadly aim at, of all people, the Heart Mountain resisters who are the subject of our film.

An Issei is slapped into handcuffs the instant he answers no-no to the Leave Clearance questionnaire. When his son surges forward, a private turns his rifle on him (“Back up, Jap!”). When an outraged crowd rushes the gate, a guard fires a warning shot.

Sound like the loyalty registration you or your parents remember? Of course not, because it’s a perfectly imperfect duplicate of camp, like the Bizarro World of Superman comics. It’s the incarceration as if it takes place in a German POW camp. But Heart Mountain was an American concentration camp, not Stalag 17.

Cast of "Allegiance" horsing around with props
Turnaround is fair play for the cast of Allegiance during a break in performance, enacting in reverse the rifle and bayonet action of the show itself.
(Allegiance Facebook page)

By design, the rifles and bayonets have a visceral impact on audiences. The theatrical devices can be argued to provide an emotional shorthand for the unrelenting physical and spiritual oppression of camp, but audiences do not share a sufficient base of common knowledge about the camps to recognize the difference between fantasy and fact.

Yes, the family at the center of Allegiance is fictional, but what’s wrapped around that fiction is billed as the true story of the Japanese American experience, and that story firmly anchors itself in the non-fiction world by invoking Heart Mountain, the Heart Mountain resisters, the 442, the Japanese American Citizens League and its wartime leader, Mike Masaoka. The show establishes the terms by which it invites itself to be measured.

And in the real world that many readers of the Rafu still remember, the armed guards at War Relocation Authority camps were restricted to the towers on the periphery of camp, a few hundred yards from the barracks. The internal security police were not trusted with guns, for fear they’d hurt someone in a quarrel. Yet in the internal logic of this mirror universe, the “Frankie” character who leads the draft resistance is seen running in the dark of night and hiding as guard dogs – guard dogs! – bark in the distance. A Quaker nurse offers him a place to hide. Frankie urges those around him to “Run!,” two guards arrive and order him to “Freeze!,” and one fires a shot into the dark.

It’s a key plot point that leads to a central tragedy. And it’s utter hokum. There is no artistic license expansive enough to justify the portrayal of guards on foot chasing a Heart Mountain draft resister through camp in order to detain him AND SHOOTING AT HIM. Even using the thinly-veiled fiction of “Frankie,” the notion violates the basic facts and circumstances of camp. And for those who have seen the show, think about this: the consequence that results from the shooting is an impossibility that could only exist in the annals of a galaxy far, far away.

“Frankie” of course is modeled on the late Frank Emi of the Fair Play Committee. There was only one draft resistance at the camp named Heart Mountain, and only one resistance leader named Frank. We sent the above to Frank’s fellow Heart Mountain resister, Yosh Kuromiya, who retorts:

“The portrayal of Frank Emi running away and hiding is absurd. Frank Emi was never one to hide or run away. There weren’t any guard dogs or firearms used in Heart Mountain. Our resistance was completely above board and open. All the FPC meetings were open to the public. Even our bulletins were publicized.

“The impressions that are given in this script are totally misleading. The whole situation wasn’t violent and it was an open forum for people to speak openly.

“The implications in the portrayal are an insult to the FPC and resisters. Even the rationale of artistic license becomes questionable in the critical accuracy of our personal history and that of Japanese American history.”

If Frank Emi had anything to fear physically, says Yosh, it was not from the guards, but from fellow incarcerees:

“I recall being concerned for their safety because they were speaking so candidly. There were inu’s (informers) in the meetings but still there was nothing covert or hidden.”

As we showed you in Conscience and the Constitution, the resisters posted fliers, held meetings, and collected dues. When the first 63 were arrested for draft evasion, the FBI needed only to look up their barrack numbers and knock on their doors at dawn. When the FBI later sought the arrest of the FPC leaders for conspiracy, Guntaro Kubota had his bag packed and was washing dishes while waiting for them. In our new DVD, Frank Emi tells how he challenged the FBI’s right to search his barrack without a warrant. He didn’t need to run, and he never had to hide.

Isolated shootings near the fences at other camps, or the two fatalities in the Manzanar Riot, cannot be claimed as the basis for this invention. It is a knowing or unknowing mash-up of events at Manzanar and Tule Lake, or another tired conflation of the Heart Mountain draft resisters with the segregees and unhappy renunciants at Tule. The military entered only two of the ten WRA camps to control unrest, and not as a permanent occupation – a matter of hours at Manzanar and two-and-a-half months at Tule Lake.

Yes, photographs can be found of incarcerees under direct armed guard, but these are mostly of inmates building their barracks, harvesting crops outside the fence, or pushing back at the imposition of martial law at Tule Lake. The presence of armed guards inside the living areas of Heart Mountain was not a commonplace fact of life. If the show wants to convey Tule Lake-like conditions, it should do that story.

The risk here is the dumbing down of camp history in American popular culture. Should the show enter the literature of the Broadway theater, it will be performed in perpetuity by countless amateur and high school groups. Friends say oh don’t take this so seriously, it’s only an entertainment, it’s not a book or documentary, no one’s going to take it as fact. But some already have, according to at least one Yonsei attendee:

“I myself may be a victim of the show as a 4th generation JA – I don’t know much about the camps, but had assumed there were armed guards walking around camp pushing people around!”

Let’s say a revisionist created her own work of art that made out conditions in camp to be better than they were, with let’s say suburban tract homes, white picket fences, and no guard towers; we’d jump down her throat. By the same token, it weakens the integrity of the factual record if a popular work makes out the civilian administration of Heart Mountain to be more brutal than it was.

Our knowledge of the camps is hard-won through four decades of work by trained scholars like Roger Daniels and Art Hansen, self-taught researchers like Michi Weglyn and Aiko Herzig, and dozens more. Several were consulted for this piece. After knocking down revisionism spanning two generations, from Lillian Baker to Michelle Malkin, it seems a shame to sell our history short for the fame, fortune and fiction of a Broadway-style musical, or even the lure of making the camps and camp resistance better known.

Playwright Frank Chin proposes a simple answer to the problem of historical accuracy – just make the whole thing a flight of fancy:

“Set the play in the present: One day in year 2012 a group of young people walk into an empty and abandoned barn. One kid turns to another and says, ‘Hey! Let’s do a show!’

‘Yeah!’

‘In camp.’

‘Yeah.’”

Yeah, that would work, but that is not the premise of this show – and that is the problem audiences should recognize, even as they are swept up in the melodrama of the moment.

Veterans have often knocked the resisters by claiming they refused to pledge allegiance to the U.S. That was never true for Yosh Kuromiya and the Heart Mountain boys, but in this instance it can be said that Yosh is declining to pledge this particular Allegiance. “It is after all,” he writes, “a matter of conscience.”

Resisters in crossfire between veterans and “Allegiance”

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.

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

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.

What to look for on opening night of “Allegiance”

actor
“Mike Masaoka” is made a character in a musical, as played by singer/actor Paolo Montalban. (Photo by Henry DiRocco)

Japanese Americans who’ve questioned just how the new musical Allegiance will portray the Japanese American experience will find out this Wednesday, Sept. 19, when the production is opened to the press.

Yes, the show will bring the story of the camps to a wider audience, and for many that alone appears to be  enough. Others will be watching to see where the evolving script finally lands in regard to its treatment of the Heart Mountain draft resisters, the soldiers of the 442, and the wartime Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). Among the things to watch for:

How will wartime JACL leader Mike Masaoka be portrayed?

No question it is remarkable to see the dark underside of loyalty, the community’s dirty laundry that was documented in Conscience and other works, brought into popular culture with this staging. However, even community members who recognize the failings of the wartime JACL and who were invited to workshop presentations of this show over the last two years reported their shock and dismay not only at seeing Mike Masaoka on stage, by name, but at seeing him caricatured as “sleazy,” a “scheming villain,” and the target of “character assassination.” Early versions of the plot unbelievably hinged on the opening of a safe in search of JACL records that would purportedly expose “Masaoka’s” plan for Nisei boys to die in combat, and thereby provide the proof needed to stop the drafting of Nisei from camp.

"Better Americans" production number
Springtime for Hitler? Masaoka and the wartime JACL get the all-singing, all-dancing treatment in the big production number, “Better Americans.” (Photo by Henry DiRocco)

Preview audiences have since reported that in the rewritten show the “Masaoka” character is less “sleazy,”in uniform for much of the show, and in one scene grieves for the death of his brother in combat. That didn’t stop the Japanese American Veterans Association from denouncing the production last week in an open letter. More rewrites are said to be taking place right up to the opening curtain on Wednesday. National JACL officials will reportedly be in the opening night audience.

How many sources can you identify?

Besides the obvious influence of Conscience on the framing of the story of Mike Masaoka and the JACL vs. the resisters, another source of inspiration lies in the screenplay for the 1976 NBC-TV movie, Farewell to Manzanar. Not the book by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston,  but the screenplay by the Houston’s and director John Korty.

(Allegiance synopsis) “Sammy … finds friendship and companionship with a quaker nurse in camp, Hannah … Sammy tries to bring the camp together with a talent show and social, but the night is hijacked by Frankie, who uses the occasion to stir opposition to their incarceration. Sammy leaves the dance angry at his sister’s apparent co-option, and he is is beaten up by men who see him as Masaoka’s stooge.”

“Frankie” in the play is Frank Emi, leader of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee. Frank Emi never disrupted any events, and would have stopped anyone who tried. Where we have seen this scenario before is in the screenplay for Manzanar which invented three elements not in Jeanne’s book: a camp talent show that is disrupted by a fistfight over the loyalty oath, a mess hall meeting that is hijacked by torch-bearing agitators who use the occasion to stir opposition to their incarceration, and a wholly-invented romance between Jeanne’s Nisei brother and a white nurse in camp. Both the book and the screenplay shared a fourth element: the beating of a JACL leader inside camp — in the book it was the real Fred Tayama of Los Angeles, in the screenplay it was the fictional Frank Nishi. Nishi, incidentally, was played 36 years ago by a younger me.

The fantasy of a romance between a Nisei man and a white woman that starts in camp is evidently irresistible, with variations on the theme played out later in Come See The Paradise and Snow Falling on Cedars. As Roger Daniels points out to me, while interracial couples did exist in camp — Karl and Elaine Black Yoneda, Arthur and Estelle Ishigo — these were couples that had married before the war and went to camp together.

The resisters’ story is used, but how is it used?

The printed song list for the first preview includes an Act Two opening number titled “Resist.” Early drafts of the script have “Frankie,” the leader of the resistance, exhorting a group of young people beneath a banner that cries, “Resist.”  Shades of Les Miserables. As we noted last week, the draft resisters at Heart Mountain never rallied others in support or raised banners, and to show them rabble-rousing is a profound disservice to their memory. If this staging is retained on opening night, the musical will further cement the confusion between the resisters and the segregants and renunciants at Tule Lake, whose actions held their own integrity but which were simply different from the Heart Mountain group.

(Allegiance synopsis) “Kei and Frankie lead the resistance to the draft at Heart Mountain … even while Hannah seeks to protect and hide Frankie and Kei from the authorities in camp …. Kei and Frankie are finally caught and arrested.”

The Fair Play Committee did not have to hide from the Nazi’s. This was not The Dairy of Anne Frank. Frank Emi and the others conducted their business openly and in public. They posted fliers, held meetings, and collected dues. When the first group of 63 resisters were arrested for draft evasion, the FBI simply looked up their barrack number in the camp registry and knocked on their doors, at dawn. When the first group was convicted, the FBI came back for the leaders on a conspiracy charge. Guntaro Kubora had his bags packed and was waiting for them. In our DVD, Frank Emi tells how the FBI came to his door and read him the charges, and how he even challenged their right to search his barrack without a search warrant.

Old Globe Playbill coverNone of these questions is likely to be asked by the first-night reviewers from Variety, Broadway World, or the San Diego Union-Tribune, but they should be. One writer who at least mentions the Masaoka controversy is Karen Wada in a feature in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times: “Some who viewed earlier versions were upset with certain aspects, including the depiction of Mike Masaoka.”

Musicals are escapist by nature and attention will focus on the interpersonal melodrama, music, and performances, with much said about the educational intentions of the book and the legitimacy conferred by the participation of Tule Lake survivor George Takei. On a personal level, our congratulations go to George for realizing his dream of a legacy project to spread the word about the camps. As mentioned in the Times and  his interview in the  Old Globe’s Playbill program, George’s father was a “no-no” segregant. As one preview audience member wondered aloud:

“George’s lines at the end are ‘You betrayed us. You betrayed your brother. These were my brothers that died.’  Who knows — he may be the driver of the anti-Masaoka themes, wanting people to understand his family’s side of the story.  He may somehow see his family as victims of Mike Masaoka.”

Resisters at heart of new musical

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.

A new look for Resisters.com

You’ll notice a new look and feel for Resisters.com. Call it Resisters.com 2.0. You can now post your own comments on these pages, as well as subscribe to email news updates about the resisters in real time.

Use the subscription form in the right sidebar, or the RSS link, and share posts on your Facebook page. The feed fulfills a long-ago request by Kenji Taguma that we have a means of quickly sharing news about the resisters. It’s not quite the magazine of Asian American literary and cultural criticism that Frank Chin insists we must have, but it’s the best I can manage for now.

I promise the posts will be newsworthy and will continue to uncover discoveries about the largest resistance to the WW2 incarceration of Japanese Americans. After 70 years interest in the camps has never been stronger. The difference is that over the past decade, with our film and now the new DVD, the paradigm for that history has widened to include the camp resistance and the JACL collaboration as part of our basic common knowledge alongside the 442, the MIS, and others.

Please leave a comment below to let us know how you like the new site, which uses the sturdier WordPress platform rather than the hand-coded site that we held together with Dreamweaver.

If there is page from the old Resisters.com site you miss and would like to see restored, leave a comment and we will repost it. We’ll soon be adding videos and links to new research, along with catching up with old news updates, reviews, and anything else you’d like to see or hear.