[00:02:49] Host: Right between Sacramento and Tahoe, yeah.

[00:02:52] Kashiwagi: Yeah. You know, Loomis, Auburn, Penryn, those small towns up there. A lot of Japanese American farmers lived up there, including my parents. My mom's family were like sharecroppers in Newcastle, another small town there. And my dad, his father ran a fish market in Loomis. You know, that's where they came from. So being from the Sacramento area, the people in that area, you know, when they first were evacuated and incarcerated, they went to Tule Lake. That was where they sent the Sacramento area people. And before that, the Arboga Assembly Center in Marysville. So that was their first stop of incarceration. And then they moved on to Tule Lake.

So of course, Tule Lake has become known as the No-No camp or, you know, where they had the troublemakers. That camp and that issue affected my dad much more than my mom, just because of their ages. And my dad was one of the No-No boys, or yeah, so-called. And you know, prior to the issue of the loyalty questions or the loyalty questionnaire in 1943, he was actually having a fairly good time as you can in a camp. He started his own theater group at Tule Lake. And they would go around from block to block and present these plays. But they were only allowed to present classic American plays. They weren't allowed to do anything Japanese, which is kind of ironic. Japanese Americans in a camp presenting classic American plays behind barbed wire fences to a captive audience, right?

So that was kind of his experience for the first, I would say, maybe a year or eight months, you know, of incarceration. And he was actually having a good time doing that. And the people were really enjoying it. It was just like a great escape, you know, if you will, from their situation of just seeing theater, live theater in camp. And so everything changed in 1943, February, when the government issued these two so-called loyalty questions. And my dad at first refused to answer. And then when he got called on it, he was kind of forced to answer, no, no. And then later actually renounced his citizenship, along with about 5,000 others at Tule Lake. And so, you know, that was my dad's experience.

[00:05:52] Host: Let's go into detail, a little bit of detail about the two questions. It was question number 27 and 28 of this loyalty questionnaire. And tell our listeners, you know, kind of what the conundrum was and how it was written and what the... there's almost a confusion of what the right way to answer, as well as a resistance as well.

[00:06:20] Kashiwagi: Yeah, they were couched, you know, questions 27 and 28 within this larger questionnaire that the government put out, which kind of asks mainly general type questions about, you know, where you live, your occupation. They also asked about your religion and your, if you were in Japanese school, if you study Japanese or any kind of martial arts or anything Japanese, and you were actually graded, scored by the government based on your answers. So if you said you were a Christian, you got point one plus one. If you said you were a Buddhist, you got minus one. And if you said you were, you know, anything other than... I think Shinto was like minus two or three. So that's how they kind of were trying to figure out people's loyalty to America, if you were loyal or not loyal. 

And so 27 and 28 were near the end of the questionnaire and 27 asked, you know, will you serve in the United States Army or armed services wherever ordered? And then 28 asked, will you forswear any loyalty or allegiance to the emperor of Japan? And so these two questions were confusing. They were insulting. They caused all sorts of problems within all 10 of the camps where people were trying to figure out how to answer, should they answer, what should they say? There were arguments between friends and siblings and families and people ended up on opposite ends of the questions. And it was just a horrible thing to do to people. And really, the biggest problem with the questions is, why are you asking us this? We have no loyalty to Japan and most of us have never been to Japan. So, you know, to ask us to forswear allegiance means, you know, we never had any to begin with. We were American. So this question, you know, was it a trick? It was insulting to our loyalty to America, but also to our intelligence. And the first question was, you know, there were many in the 442 regimental combat team that volunteered out of camp and their position was, OK, so you're questioning my loyalty. So I'm going to have to prove my loyalty to you by signing up and serving and doing the absolute best we can for the country, for the community, for ourselves.

[00:09:25] Host: And putting my life on the line, too.

[00:09:29] Kashiwagi: Yes. And they definitely did that. And they paid a heavy, heavy price for that. And then there were those like my dad and others who were resistant to this idea. And my dad's position was fairly simple. It's like, well, OK, if you take me out of this camp, if you free myself and my family and my community, then I will happily serve in the army or in the armed services. If you don't do that, then I refuse to, you know, agree to this question and do what you want me to do. And so that was just where they were sitting at the time, you know, both valid answers, but it just depended on your thinking and who you were and where you were in your life at that time. And that's how they made their decisions.

[00:10:21] Host: And your dad was at that ripe age where he would have been sent over at 19, 18, 19, 20.

[00:10:29] Kashiwagi: Yeah. You know, he had an ability to speak Japanese and read Japanese from study in school growing up. He felt like he could have served in the military intelligence service, you know, had he not been put in camp, that probably would have been the route he would have gone if he served in the military.

[00:10:50] Host: Now, and in answering “No” to these questions and being kind of labeled as this No-No boy, there was a lot of pushback against all of those who answered, from inside the Japanese American community, the JACL. Their pushback was against your father and others who resisted as well.

[00:11:17] Kashiwagi: Definitely. We call it a stigma of this No-No boy stigma that was created, you know, largely perpetuated by the JACL. And it kind of lived throughout my dad's life. You know, it was just a heavy burden he carried. And all the No-Nos carried this burden of somehow being the disloyals and the troublemakers, you know, and the ones that didn't toe the line. A lot of them pretty much kept their heads down, you know, after the war and didn't reveal who they were. Because if they knew, if people knew in the community who they were, they would be judged, they would be scorned, they would be ostracized. All of that happened. And so they just kind of kept quiet and kept their position, you know, very low as far as like not talking about it, not ever publicly, and a lot of times not even to their own families. You know, there are No-No families that, you know, the members say, my dad, he never talked about it. He never told us about it. It's really a shame that so many No-Nos went to their graves, you know, with this burden still on their shoulders that they were disloyal. But I think to every No-No, if you talk to them, they would still believe that their position was a righteous one and that they didn't regret it. They felt like it was the correct decision. And history has kind of proven them right in that this unconstitutional act of incarceration, you know, was enough to resist and say no-no to these questions.

[00:13:17] Host: That reminds me of like when Black Americans have altercations with police officers or Latin Americans are confronted by ICE agents and it becomes an altercation because there's a resistance, and the questions will inevitably arise of like, well, why did you resist? Why didn't you just comply? Why didn't you just comply? Which is kind of the same thing that they were saying to the No-No boys, just comply. But the answer is, we did nothing wrong. Yeah, just like your father and the other 120,000 loyal Japanese-Americans, they did nothing wrong.

[00:13:59] Kashiwagi: Yeah, that's really the sad part about it, isn't it? I mean, they just they did nothing wrong. That's right. And here they were labeled and stigmatized for their entire lives. And it's really it's really unfair, actually. And the sad part about it is that it came from members of our own community and it still continues on today to some degree. It's not as bad as it used to be because there's been a lot of frankly, there's been a lot of change within our community of how we see resistance and how we see these resistors. They're no longer, you know, blanketed as No-Nos, as troublemakers, as the disloyals. People now understand, you know, their position. And members of my generation, a lot of them feel like, hey, I would have been the same. I would have done the same thing.

[00:15:06] Host: And fight for your rights at any cost.

[00:15:10] Kashiwagi: And your everyday American who knows and has studied the Constitution would do the same thing, you know, because that's who we are. Right. Or who we're supposed to be. We're built on this idea of dissent and protest. And that's come out even more in recent years, you know, with George Floyd protests or just protests in the street about what's happening now. People understand, especially now, how important it is to speak out and protest when something is definitely going wrong in the country.

[00:15:50] Host: I want to talk about your dad's creativity. You said that he, before all of the no-no boy and the loyalty questionnaire, he was performing these plays. Your dad is a playwright as well, and a poet. Was he using those creative outlets while he was in the prison camp as well?

[00:16:13] Kashiwagi: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. You know, he actually wrote a play, I think, while he was in camp. But the plays that they performed, of course, were American plays. But he was definitely utilizing his skills as an actor. And that started from like, you know, grammar school or junior high school when he was in a school play. And that kind of caught the acting bug there. And so this kind of just continued on in camp. And so that's where his creativity was helping, you know, people, you know, in the camp.

[00:16:48] Host: In a poem that your dad wrote in 1975, A Meeting at Tule Lake after his first pilgrimage back to Tule Lake, he wrote about the theater in camps, and the art in the camps, and music, and painting, and gardening. And he called it “beauty behind barbed wires,” which I love that line. And he wrote, “Keep them busy, keep them occupied, keep them sane, for heaven's sake.” But it feels like this sanity comes from finding elements of humanity while in prison camps, this element of normalcy, of how do we create kind of everyday life, even in the harshest of situations.

[00:17:37] Kashiwagi: That was definitely what they did. I mean, at Manzanar, you had them build gardens, you know, Japanese gardens in the middle of the camp. And they grew flowers and, you know, they planted food and did their farming. And it was all to make the best of a bad situation. You know, of course, they started all these sports programs, and they had Japanese traditional arts, you know, dancing, and singing, and theater. And, of course, dances, you know, were fun events that kind of like took people away from what was happening. And this was all part of an effort to make it bearable. And I'm just learning recently that a lot of this was driven by the Issei parents, our first-generation parents, who refused to give in to what was happening to them and decided, we need to make this better. We need to have them have fun, you know. And so...

[00:18:49] Host: For all the children that were there and the teenagers, absolutely.

[00:18:53] Kashiwagi: Yeah, yeah. It was really an enormous effort of love from the parents to their kids of protecting them, but also wanting them to have fun in camp. And so, you know, for the longest time, I used to kind of scoff, you know, and look at Nisei that said, oh, I had fun in camp. But only recently have I understood actually from hearing from June Burke, who is a Nisei survivor, who said she had fun in camp, and it was because of her parents. The parents made it so.

[00:19:26] Host: Do you know, was that your mother's experience at a young age?

[00:19:31] Kashiwagi: Ah, I don't know if she had fun per se, but she did have things that provided distraction. School. There was school. There was a camp library where she said she escaped in books. There were friends to play with on the block. And she helped her mom make kamaboko in camp. Kamaboko is a fish cake. And I guess her mom had some contacts outside and they sent in barracuda. And she used to pick it up on a red wagon and bring it back to her mom. And then her mom would make these little kamaboko fish cakes in camp and sell them to people. And that's how she had money after camp.

[00:20:24] Host: I want to talk about a play that you wrote called Camp Dance, Music and the Memories. And in this production, you explore this kind of normalcy, this creating of humanity, this beauty behind the barbed wires. Tell us about the show and how you put it together.

[00:20:43] Kashiwagi: So we actually got a grant in the early 2000s from CCLIP, California Civil Liberties Education Grant.

[00:20:54] Host: Same program. Same that we're making this podcast with.

[00:20:56] Kashiwagi: Yes. So we were one of the early recipients, grant recipients, to do a show about the dances that high school kids had while incarcerated in camp.

[00:21:11] Host: And this is like a prom or some Sadie Hawkins, that kind of a dance.

[00:21:18] Kashiwagi: Yeah. It was like your typical high school dance. You know, it had all the elements of cray paper decorations and cookies and punch. It was just held in a barracks inside a barbed wire fence, you know, surrounded by guard towers in a camp on the middle of nowhere. So that was the big difference. So our task in putting the show together was creating or telling this story. So to do that, I went around and interviewed a number of people that attended the dances and asked them, what do you remember? What were your favorite songs? Tell us some funny stories and compiled all that and created these vignettes, which became scenes in the show and interspersed amongst these scenes where there was a singing of all these classic 1940s songs, you know, American. And there were some Japanese songs in there as well. But these songs that they danced to, like Moonlight Serenade and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, you know, all the classics that we sang, and just hearing one of these songs brings back so many memories for all the people who were there. It takes them actually right back to that place in the middle of the barrack at the end of the dance, slow dancing with their special person. They remember that just by hearing, you know, the music and the songs. And so that's where we created the show. And then we started touring it, you know, throughout the grant was, you know, to go up and down California. We did Southern California where we're based. And then there was we went all over. We went Central Cal, the Bay Area, Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno. This was in like 2004, 2005. And this is when the Nisei were still around in pretty large numbers. We would do the show and then they would really love it. And then we would tell them where our next place, you know, tour stop was. And they would call all their friends and that group would show up at the show. It became a total word of mouth show where we didn't even have to do a lot of promotion. It would just kind of sold on this word of mouth and people would come out. And we performed for like 400 people in a gym, you know, in one of these churches, Japanese American churches throughout California. And yeah, we actually took the show to Manzanar as well.

[00:24:10] Host: Oh, wow.

[00:24:11] Kashiwagi: Yeah, that was really something because Mary Nomura, they called her the songbird of Manzanar. She was 16, 17 years old in camp and she was the singer, featured singer at the dances. To have her, and back then she was in her 80s, return to the same stage, the auditorium at Manzanar and sing the same song again was just a moment that we'll never forget.

[00:24:44] Host: Oh, wow.

[00:24:45] Kashiwagi: The audience will never forget. Everybody just started crying and it was quite amazing to have that happen.

[00:24:53] Host: So you created this piece with the Grateful Crane Ensemble. Tell us about your theater company, how it got started, what your mission is and where you've grown from those initial productions.

[00:25:08] Kashiwagi: Okay, so we started in 2001. So next year will be our 25th year. We started at the Cato Retirement Home in Los Angeles, Boyle Heights. It was just a simple thing where we brought together some actors and sang Japanese children songs for the seniors with a message and the message was fairly simple. It was really just wanting to say thank you to them, to our seniors. At the time, there were still a few Issei around, not too many, but mainly a lot of Nisei and really over the course of the several months that we started in 2001, we started going from Japanese children songs to telling Japanese children stories. And then from there, we went to stories about Japanese American history. And in doing the research for that, I already knew, but then I realized even more how much the Issei and the Nisei really suffered and sacrificed throughout our history for us to be able to do what we do, who we are. The Japanese have a saying called, “kodomo no tame ni,” which means for the sake of the children. The Issei brought that over and the Nisei carried it on. And everything they did was for the sake of the children. So our group's mission and message became one of gratitude, sincere thankfulness. For what they have had suffered for us.

What started happening was that, you know, in seeing their stories presented on stage, even at a small venue as the retirement home, they in the context of seeing their story told and hearing songs from their childhood or from camp. And then at the end, when we come in with the message of gratitude and just literally say the words, “thank you” to them, many of them just started crying, you know, because it had never been really presented to them and spoken to them like this before. It may have been done in a family situation, usually not spoken, but maybe in a birthday card or something. But to do it in sort of like a public way, a recognition of who they are and what they did for us really, really touched their hearts. And that's kind of where we got started. And it's really everything we've done has been based on that idea of honoring the Issei and Nisei.

It started out, we do these shows for you, but as years have gone by and pretty much not all, but most of the Nisei are no longer able or gone, it's now doing these shows and telling their stories on behalf of them, in honor of them, in gratitude to them. And so that's how we've sort of continued on through the years. It's evolved from shows, you know, like we did Camp Dance. We did the story of Japantown called Nihonmachi, the place to be, which also kind of had its life, you know, touring around the state and parts of the country. And then, you know, there have been other shows. We did my dad's play The Betrayed, which was a camp story set at Tule Lake. You know, we've done all sorts of different shows, you know, doing a spoof of a Japanese New Year's show in Japan. We did a show called the J-Town Jazz Club, which talked about how Little Tokyo became Bronzeville, an African-American neighborhood during the war, when all the JAs were in camp. And then I wrote this play called Garage Door Opener, which has not actually been produced as a play, but just as a reading.

[00:29:31] Host: Sure. Not yet. Not yet. Yeah.

[00:29:35] Kashiwagi: But even the reading has just gotten an enormous reaction. And it's what I call my Japanese-American dysfunctional family play. And I would describe that to people, especially of my generation. And they would just literally start laughing, laughing about just the idea of a dysfunctional family, because that's where they grew up, in the middle of one. And so they related right away. And then once we got into it in the play itself, and told the story of the silence that many of our families lived with, that it really resonated very strongly with them.

And then now, it's interesting, we're finding even newer ways to what I call service to the community. Some community groups have asked us to create sort of custom-made shows for whatever event they're having. So, for example, up in San Francisco, there is a famous manju store called Benkyoro that closed in 2022. And they didn't really have a chance, or the community didn't really have a chance to say goodbye, because it was the pandemic and all. And so they brought us up in, I believe it was 2023. And they asked us to create a show kind of just in tribute to Benkyoro and what it meant to the community. And we did that. And it really went over very well with people who finally had a chance to thank the family who was there at the show for all these years, over 100 years of service. And then the Buddhist Churches of America recently asked us to create a show celebrating its 125th anniversary. And so that was a pretty daunting task. We went through a history books and other books, talked to people, and created a show. And that's going to be touring around next year.

And another thing we've done, and we're going actually later this year in October, is we've done these goodwill tours to Tohoku, Japan, after the 2011 tsunami and triple disaster. We started going on these trips starting in 2014. And then this will be our fifth trip in 2025. Really going to Japan, to these areas, you know, and singing songs, Japanese songs mainly, but some American songs. But with the idea of lifting their spirits, but also extending friendship and support from us here in America. And come to find out that, you know, we have a long history in our Japanese American community of supporting Japan in its time of greatest need. And it goes back to the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1924, when Tokyo and a good part of Japan was just completely flattened by this devastating earthquake. The Issei here started fundraising drives, and they raised all kinds of money, just amongst themselves to support the rebuilding of Japan after that earthquake. And so it's kind of started there. And it was really something I found a receipt, my grandfather's receipt for a $30 donation he made in 1924, that got sent to Japan, he got the receipt. And you know, come to find out, in today's dollars, it's probably like $400 to $500. And these tours that we do now, I kind of see as an extension of what the Issei were already doing. Issei and Nisei, because after the war, they were sending what could best be described as these care packages, which were these boxes of food, staples, coffee, you know, you name it, clothing, everything they didn't have, because they had nothing in Japan, their families and friends. They were eating bugs, you know, and they had no food. And so for years after the war, like 10, over 10 years, Issei and Nisei were shipping these boxes to Japan to help their families. And even now, you have relatives, who were kids, then they're now grown up, who tell relatives that are go over and visit, I've never forgotten those boxes. They saved us that clothing. I was the envy of the school, because I had clothes and the food and everything. So it's not something that we just kind of dreamed up. You know, as it turned out, it just, there's a historical context to it. Yeah, it's just something who we are, actually, you know.

[00:34:43] Host: You really put the grateful into Grateful Crane.

[00:34:46] Kashiwagi: Yeah, yeah. And the people there, you know, our message to them is, you know, we have not forgotten you, because they have always told us, please don't forget us. And they pretty much, you know, have been forgotten, you know, at 12, well now 13, 14 years. I guess this would be the 14th year after the 2011 disaster. But they always say, you came all the way from America to do this for us, you know, and so they're very, very touched by it. And they just, you know, they're great. They're great people. They have a lot of spirit. You know, they just need, you know, a little bit of friendship and some songs to lift their spirits. And it's interesting, because, you know, the songs that we sang here for the Issei and Nisei have the same effect on the Japanese people there. They know the songs, they sing along, you know, and they're happy, you know. And so that's the whole idea.

[00:35:46] Host: We're in a time now where the Alien Enemies Act is threatened to be initiated, where Birthright Citizenship is in danger of being taken away, where prison camps are quickly built to house those who look and sound a certain way without due process. I mean, this is a very reminiscent time to what happened in 1942. And people are scared for good reason. So, like you were talking about ,the songs and the plays, and this theater, how does art, how does theater play a role in helping when things seem so helpless? How do we create that beauty behind barbed wire? And on the other side of barbed wire as well?

[00:36:38] Kashiwagi: I think art is needed more now than ever before. And the thing is, I think the current administration recognizes what art can do and the power of art, and they're trying to squelch it, you know, by taking over the Kennedy Center and, you know, squelching public, you know, Sesame Street or, you know, NPR. And it gives people hope, you know? It takes them out. I'm talking about theater and music and songs. It takes them out of their current state of thinking and mind and takes them somewhere else. The magic of theater is, you know, seeing your story presented on stage, especially if it's, you know, in our case, a Japanese-American story, say in camp. It actually, they feel like they're validated as a person. You know, this is my story. This happened to me, and here it is presented truthfully and accurately on stage. And it kind of opens them up to all kinds of different emotions that have been buried for years. And, you know, this is anger, this is shame, this is regret, this is, you know, all these different things, you know, that they've never really expressed and kept bottled up inside. But all of a sudden, a song like Moonlight Serenade can bring them out of it and release all these emotions and people start crying during the show. And then there's comedic moments where they're laughing. All these things are released.

And what we found with Camp Dance, Nihonmachi, other shows, you know, families go out to dinner after the show, and they tell us, you know, the kids tell us that their parents started talking, telling stories about camp, you know, that they saw up on stage that was similar or maybe the same or maybe a little bit different. But they told their own stories to their kids, stories that they had never expressed to them before. And these kids, you know, sometimes there were grandkids there, they were just shocked, but so grateful to be able to hear them finally, you know, with all this kind of release and storytelling, and kind of like an unburdening of what they've been holding on to, it ultimately leads to a healing. And that's what I feel like our shows, you know, like Camp Dance, Nihonmachi, I feel like those, you know, have done that for people in our community.

The power of story, we need to hear more stories of these immigrants currently being targeted. Who are they? Where did they come from? Who are their families? You know, how did they grow up? And once you start hearing the stories, you soon begin to realize that we're not that different. You know, we all have mothers and fathers, and we all have dreams, and we may not speak the same languages, but we have the same kind of feelings. That, I think, opens the door to like, once you know somebody, once you can call them a friend, you can't do this, the things that are happening, you know, right now. You won't allow it. You can't allow it. This is my friend, you know, all of a sudden they become your friend. But to get to that point, you need to hear, somehow there needs to be a vehicle for them to hear their stories. And a lot of that is done through the arts, you know, either plays or, you know, programs or speeches or whatever format is used to tell stories. I think that could be the ultimate result, is just getting to know each other and our common humanity.

[00:40:52] Host: We'd like to thank Soji Kashiwagi and the Grateful Crane Ensemble. Chapters podcast was produced by Past Forward and made possible with support from Chapman University and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library. For more information, visit pastforward.org, chapman.edu, and library.ca.gov.