Mini Episode with Jeanne Sakata
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Transcript
LEILAN: The Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program would like to acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on the traditional unceded ancestral homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. We hope that as we continue to facilitate these conversations about Asian diasporic communities, we also engage in critical dialogue about what it means to be uninvited guests and settlers on these lands.
Welcome to the second mini-episode of the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Podcast, a series of short interviews where we sit down with members of the ACAM community and learn about the community initiatives and projects that they’ve been working on. My name is Leilan Wong, and I’m the Special Projects Coordinator at ACAM and joining me today is actor, playwright and activist Jeannie Sakata. We hope that this interview series can be a way to continue building connections between ACAM students, faculty, staff, and community partners, while also providing our community members with a platform to share similar work that they’ve been doing during this time. My guest for this episode is Jeanne Sakata. Jeanne joined the ACAM family through her play Hold These Truths, which follows the story of Gordon Hirabayashi as he legally challenged the racist curfews leading up to Japanese internment in World War Two. In today’s chat, we will hear more about the importance of Gordon’s legacy today, and we will get a sneak peek of Jeanne’s upcoming work titled For Us All, a radio play commissioned by LA Theatre Works and inspired by the legal battle of Fred Korematsu. To begin the conversation, it’s important to learn a bit more about Jeanne’s own experience and relationship to migration. Jeanne, could you tell us a bit about your family’s migration story?
Jeanne: Well, I am Japanese American, of the Sansei generation, which means the American-born generation, or I should say, the second American-born generation. Of course, the Issei were the Japanese immigrants. They were my grandparents’ generation. So, my grandparents, who were Issei, were both from Wakayama-ken, the Wakayama Prefecture in Japan. My grandfather came over to the United States first, he had no money. But he had a lot of ambition and a lot of dreams. And he had heard these rumours and these stories circulating around his village about travelling to America and making a fortune and then being able to come back to Japan. So, he was the eldest son in his family, and he went to his parents, and he begged them to let him go to America. And if he did, he would have to give up his rights as the eldest son, which he did. He wanted to go that badly. And somehow he convinced them to let him go. And he arrived in Vancouver, and moved in with his uncles, and worked in a cannery up in Vancouver fishing cannery. And my grandfather took his part of the fortune and used it to stay in California to travel around a bit to see if he could start farming on his own. And eventually, he was able to hook up with my grandmother who came from the same village. And so they, with a couple of my grandfather and grandmother’s sons started a Sakata Ranches, which was a farming and shipping company, where they were raising iceberg lettuce. And they started another company called L & W. Land Company. So they had these two companies and were thriving with this business until World War Two, of course, when they had to clear out because of executive order 9066. And were temporarily you know, for a few years waylaid in their farming operations. So my father’s side of the family went into the Poston Camp in Arizona. So they left the camp after a year. But because of various factors that they were encountering, they decided to go up to Oregon, and they were farming for a few years up there and then eventually came back down to Watsonville. And completed their family and their children had children of which I am one. And so I grew up in Watsonville. And Watsonville was a- had a thriving Japanese American community. I grew up in a house that was right in the middle of my father’s and grandfather’s lettuce fields. On my mother’s side of the family. They… their family grew up in a little town called Los Animas in Colorado. So they were very poor and they had a lot of stories about growing up with the racism in this little town in Colorado. But it was very interesting because they were in Colorado, they did not have to go into the camps. Because executive order 9066, targeted anyone of Japanese ancestry on the west coast. At one point, my aunt’s visited Poston, Arizona, where my dad’s side of the family was incarcerated. And they were really shocked. They said, they put you out here in the middle of the desert. So even with all the racism that they grew up in, in Colorado, the idea that they would have this mass incarceration of anyone of Japanese ancestry on the west coast and banish them all to the desert was quite shocking to them. So that is my family’s story on my mom’s side. And I really drawn on both of them. You know, as I’ve tackled writing Gordon Hirabayashi’s story.
LEILAN: You have shared with us the story of your family’s migration and the rich details of the process of building your lives in the United States. As you mentioned, you drew from your own family’s story, as you took on the task of sharing Gordon’s, could you tell us a little bit more about how your play Hold These Truths came into being?
Jeanne: The way that I usually summarise Hold These Truths is that it’s a story that’s inspired by the real-life of Gordon Hirabayashi. And it focuses on the fact that that he openly defied and then legally challenged a racist curfew that was issued by the government in which only targeted people of Japanese ancestry and executive order 9066 which, of course, were the government orders for all people of Japanese ancestry to be banished from the West Coast into barbed-wire prison camps in the desert. And the story of Hold These Truths is how Gordon openly defied and then legally challenged these orders. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court and eventually became a landmark civil rights case. I was really fascinated by all four of the stories that I read about and heard about of legal resistance to the curfew and executive order 9066 Min Yasui, Fred Korematsu, Gordon and Mitsuye Endo, but I chose Gordon’s story because I felt the deepest connection to it. And partly, I think that’s because of my background that I just described, I could place myself in a very specific world when I read about Gordon’s background. And even though he was from a very different background, religiously, his family was part of the Mukyōkai, which was this kind of rebel, Japanese religious group. But I knew those hymns, I knew those Issei men and women holding the hymnals in front of them singing in Japanese, I knew what it was like to be doing, you know, labour on the farm, I hold lettuce from my dad and hating it, as Gordon did, you know, he hated the farm work. And so, it gave me confidence that I could place myself in a very specific world and know the sights and smells and sounds of that world. And even though I had a lot of research to do in terms of Gordon’s story and his legal challenge, it gave me a certain amount of confidence to know that I knew that world intimately that he grew up with, that I knew the challenges that Gordon faced in overcoming the messages that I think a Japanese American Christian background would send to him, You know, not only the tendency of, I think Japanese American Christians to not be actively confronting and challenging legally, as Gordon did, the circumstances that he found himself in that, you know, all Japanese people, both native-born and born in America faced during those times, but also the tendency of Japanese Americans, because of the culture, you know, that I kind of crystallise in that quote, “Deru kugi wa utareru”, the nail that sticks out as the one that gets hit, not to challenge not to confront not to stick out in any way, and consider the good of the group rather than the voice of the challenging individual. So I felt I also knew that and knew what Gordon would have to overcome in order to speak out as he did and to challenge executive order 9066 and the curfew as he did.
LEILAN: I’m curious and learning a little bit more about the afterlife of Hold These Truths, as in the reactions the production has received, and the continued importance of Gordon’s acts of resistance. In our current moment of increased anti-Asian racism and violence, how do you feel to play continues to be relevant?
Jeanne: Well, I think racism never goes away. It might go underground for a while. But it’s caused by fear and ignorance, and hatred. And that’s, you know, a potent mix of human qualities that mankind is always having to contend with. So it was interesting, because in the journey of this play, we premiered the play here in Los Angeles in 2007. And I remember, we were all thinking back then, that we were going to shine a light on a period of history, and a story that was very important as a quintessential American story, and shine a light on this wonderful American, who all Americans should know about. But the thinking then was that it was really kind of a period piece. And the great irony and sadness that we feel, even as we feel the great blessing of sharing Gordon’s story for the past 13 years across the country, has been that the story and the circumstances that are described in the story have become more and more immediate, and more and more present in the everyday news that we see and hear and talk about. Right now, of course, as you mentioned, we have a wave of anti-Asian and anti-Asian American violence, things like this are on the rise every day. It’s very terrifying. And these are the same circumstances that Gordon Hirabayashi, of course, and his friends and his family and his community found themselves in, in the 1940s. And we can certainly see this wave of anti-Asian violence that’s going to be with us for some time, I think, paralleling the same wave of anti-Japanese violence that was happening after Pearl Harbour was bombed. So the play, sadly, has become more and more immediately relevant, you know, in its 13-year history. And I imagine that the circumstances as we see them unfold, as we watch the play, feel more and more immediate, and more and more like they’re not in another time decades away in the 1940s. It’s the world we’re experiencing now. My new play, For Us All, is about the 1980s battle in courts to overturn the criminal conviction that Fred Korematsu was saddled with at the Supreme Court in World War 2 when he challenged executive order 9066. The play is hugely inspired by a book that Lorraine K. Bannai wrote, she’s called Lori in the play, it’s called Enduring Conviction. And it’s about Fred Korematsu and his stand against executive order 9066. And his Coram Nobis trial in the 1980s. I was really fascinated by this legal battle in the 1980s because it brought Gordon’s story and Fred’s story into my generation. Because a great many of the legal team that fought for Fred were of my generation. They worked pro bono for years without pay to fight for Fred and Gordon and Min because they saw the suffering of their parents they grew up with, as I did with the pain of executive order 9066 and the trauma inflicted on their parents. So, I think that it was a huge draw for me to tell their story as well.
LEILAN: I guess I’m wondering just if you could talk a little bit about how working on it during COVID has really impacted the project?
Jeanne: Well, I think it’s interesting. You mentioned COVID, because LA Theatre Works, who commissioned the play, is a producer of audio plays, they don’t produce on-stage plays, as I was interviewing Dale and Lori. And because I wish, I knew I was writing an audio play for radio, I really listened to their voices, and what their voices were telling me about their personalities. So certain things that they said in the interviews that were very visual, I really connected to, and really tried to put into the play, and draw out the imagery and flesh it out even more.
LEILAN: Do you want to speak briefly about your experience being in the play yourself, like working on the play, and then also being cast in it?
Jeanne: Yeah, it was very interesting, because LA Theatre works asked me to play Aiko. They said they heard my voice, and thought that I had the right quality and personality for Aiko, and who would know that character in the play better than the playwright. So being an actress myself, I could not resist because I said, Wow, this is an honour to play Aiko, it’s a, it’s a great person to play. And I just loved Aiko, I loved her intellect, her passion, her humility, you know, even up to the end, she was saying, it was the young people that did this, the young people. It was very interesting being the playwright and the actor playing Aiko. And, you know, it’s one thing to write a role. And even if you’re really satisfied with how you’ve written it, it’s another thing to bring that character to life as an actor. And what I had to do in the studio, was really listened to Anna Lyse, who directed it and start from zero, you know, as if I had not written the part.
These stories are not… to many Americans, these stories are not known. And I think they’re very important to hear right now. You know, we are going through so many times of crisis and devastation. And I think that we need hopeful stories right now. I think that it’s important to remember that Gordon Hirabayashi lived with that Supreme Court conviction as Fred Korematsu did as Min Yasui did, for many years, for decades. Justice was not immediately served to him, even though he fought for it in his 20s, he did not see the fruits of that fight until decades later. And it’s something to keep in mind as we weather these grave challenges to our democracy. And as we weather these grave devastations of COVID-19. It’s important to hear these stories right now knowing that it was decades before they saw justice. But it was important for them to stand up for justice in a time even when they knew they might not see the fruits of that challenge. So that is why I’ve wanted to tell Gordon’s story and Fred’s story and the story of Dale, and Lori and Don and Aiko and Peter, because even if they lost, they wanted to tell this story. They wanted to fight this fight. And that’s a huge inspiration for me right now as we’re facing the very serious devastation and crisis that we are facing.
LEILAN: Thank you Jeannie for taking the time to chat with me today. For those of you that are still listening. Thank you for tuning into this conversation. If you have an idea for a mini-episode, or know someone that we should interview, we’d love to hear from you. Send us your ideas by emailing us at acam.program@ubc.ca. We hope these mini-episodes can provide a way to stay connected with the ACAM community to be notified when the next podcast episode is released and stay up to date on all things a cam please follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @ubcacam and like us on Facebook at Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies UBC.