OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
May 19, 2014
Volume 24 Number 10
May 19, 2014
ISSN: 1094-9453
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n Dmae Roberts
Breaking the silence
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or the past few months, I’ve been volun-
teering to stage readings of Asian American
and Pacific Islander plays that haven’t been
seen or produced in Portland. Last summer, dancer
and actor Chisao Hata introduced me to the work of
Seattle playwright Nikki Nojima
Louis, who has been touring her
Japanese-American oral history
play, Breaking the Silence, in
different communities around the
country.
On December 7, 1941, Louis was
celebrating her fourth birthday in
Seattle when the FBI entered her
family’s home and took her father
away. On February 19, 1942, the
American government rounded up
more than 110,000 Japanese-
American men, women, and
children on the west coast and
forced them into what amounted
Nikki Nojima Louis.
to barbed-wire concentration
camps. This was done under Executive Order 9066,
signed and issued by President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. Forced to leave quickly, most of the
families lost their houses, land, and property — sold
cheaply or outright stolen from them during their
incarceration.
Four-year-old Nikki and her mother were forced
to live in the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho
without her father. He was sent to a prison camp in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. At Minidoka, Louis was
known as the “Shirley Temple of Minidoka” because
she performed in the Christmas shows that toured
around camp. More than 9,000 hardworking
American citizens were imprisoned there.
Even after President Roosevelt rescinded the
executive order near the close of World War II,
many families were still in resettlement facilities
and temporary housing until the camps were shut
down in 1946. This generation of Japanese
Americans had a difficult time talking about what
happened to them. Not until the 1960s civil-rights
era — when African Americans fought bravely for
equality — did many sons and daughters of the
internees press their parents to “break the silence”
that surrounded the war years.
As a Nisei (second generation), Louis was part of
the generation that fought for civil rights and
redress for incarceration. Even though she was at
Minidoka as a child, she knew little of the camp
experience. The Issei (first generation), including
her parents, rarely talked about their painful past.
F
“Our parents were silent about that time,” said
Louis, describing how many Issei believed the “nail
that sticks up gets pounded down.” In other words,
“keep your mouth shut.” But the civil-rights
movement gave Nisei the motivation to speak out.
Years later, Louis attended a
talk by Gordon Hirabayashi, a
Seattle sociologist who challenged
the constitutionality of the
wartime
imprisonment
of
Japanese Americans. He took the
case all the way to the Supreme
Court but lost. Later he was sent
to a federal prison for refusing to
join the military because of a
questionnaire demanding renun-
ciation of allegiance to the
emperor of Japan. He argued that
no other ethnic groups were asked
to do this. Louis was so moved by
Hirabayashi’s story that she
began researching the internment
years and wrote Breaking the Silence. The play
premiered in 1985 to benefit Hirabayashi’s defense
fund for his civil-liberties trial and raised $10,000.
Hirabayashi’s conviction was overturned in 1987.
Since then, Louis has travelled across the U.S.,
from Seattle to Appalachia, with what she calls a
“living, breathing” play to help people learn about
this painful time of Asian-American history. At
each venue where the play is performed, Louis
rewrites the last part of the script to reflect local
history.
Last summer, Louis and actors from the Pacific
Northwest, including Hata, took Breaking the
Silence to the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
in Hiroshima, Japan. It was part of the 68th
anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. Louis said it was a moving
experience to be part of the all-day commemoration
with 50,000 audience members on Hiroshima Day.
Louis recounted the story of a man who came up
to her after the performance of Breaking the Silence.
He told her that now he knew what happened to his
grandfather when he went to America. Another
man who was driving the performers around
Hiroshima said his grandfather had gone to
America for better opportunities and faced so much
racism that he returned to Japan. The driver’s
mother was pregnant with him when his father
returned in 1945, just months before the atomic
bomb fell.
Continued on page 7
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.
