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5/30/2007

A Divided Community by Momo Yashima, Frank Chin & the Resisters

Under the direction of Momo Yashima, this play includes individuals who refused to serve in the U.S. armed forces during World War II while they and their families were unconstitutionally forced to live in domestic concentration camps.  The story highlights the conflict with the government over their refusal to report for military duty while their families were incarcerated.  It also points out the internal conflict within the Japanese American community over their stand during the war. That conflict persists today. The staged reading reveals the positions of these individual resisters when confronted by their situation during the war.

 

Momo Yashima is an accomplished actress who has worked for 30 years in movies, television and on stage. After attending Cal State University, Los Angeles, as an English major and dancing for the Dance Department at USC. She studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York under Sanford Meisner.  She worked with the Music Center’s Improvisational Theatre Project with Gordan Davidson and East West Players.  At East West Players, she performed in more than 20 shows, from Shakespeare to Ibsen, including Frank Chin’s Year of the Dragon.   She was able to participate in the development of such Asian American playwrights as Phillip Gotanda, Velina Houston, Jon Shirota, Wakako Yamauchi, Frank Chin, Momoko Iko, and Ed Sakamoto.  In addition to theatre, she has appeared in the made-for-television movie, Farewell to Manzanar.  Her parents, artists Mitsu and Taro Yashima, wrote award-winning children's books. Her brother, Mako, was the well-known as an actor and director.

 

Frank Chin, besides his work as a playwright, is known for his novels, including Donald Duk and The Gunga Din Highway, as well as his short stories and essays. Along with Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Inada and Shawn Wong, he edited the landmark Asian American anthology, Aiiieeeee! in 1974. A long-time supporter of the resisters, Chin has sought to publicize their stories for three decades.

 

Cast

 

Ralph Brannen grew up in Long Beach and was a founding member of East West Players’ Total Theater Ensemble.  He has appeared in such films as Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Eating Raoul.  Ralph’s mother is Japanese American and his father in an Osage Native American from Missouri.  He is a graduate of UCLA where he majored in psychology / pre-med but chose follow his heart and became an actor. He is married to Momo Yashima, and they have two daughters.

 

Frank Emi grew up in the San Fernando Valley before his family moved to Long Beach. In the 1930s, he was attending Long Beach Junior College when his father was in an automobile accident, forcing Emi to quit school to run the family's produce market. The market had expanded to the size of a present-day supermarket at the cost of $25,000, but when the war began the family was forced to sell it for only $1,500. Emi was held along with his wife in Wyoming’s Heart Mountain relocation camp.  He and his wife had their first child, a daughter, three weeks after Pearl Harbor.  Their second child, a son, was born in the camp in 1943, and the youngest child was born in 1948. At Heart Mountain, he became one of the leaders of the Fair Play Committee that demanded their rights before they would join the Army.

 

Dian Kobayashi was born on the Big Island of Hawaii. Her family later moved to the San Joaquin Delta in Stockton. She now makes her home in Los Angeles.  Her most recent appearances were in the productions of Yohen at the Pan Asian Rep in New York City and Winchester House at the Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena.  She has performed for theatres across the country, including the International City Theatre (Long Beach), A.C.T. (San Francisco), Sacramento Theatre Company, Sundance Children’s Theatre (Utah), Barrington Stage Company (Massachusetts), Long Wharf Theatre (Connecticut), Public Theater (New York), Seattle Rep, South Coast Rep (Costa Mesa), Berkeley Rep, Doolittle Theatre (Los Angeles), Huntington Theatre Company (Boston), Syracuse Stage, Arizona Theatre Company, Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles), and East West Players (Los Angeles).  Her T.V. and film credits include The William Coit Story, Donor Unknown, Baby M, California Dreams, The Tracey Ullman Show, Dynasty, General Hospital, Sibling Rivalry, Hot Shots! Part Deux, Drinking Tea, and Ophelia Learns to Swim.

She dedicates her performance to all of the internees, who met adversity with courage and dignity.

Yosh Kuromiya grew up in Sierra Madre, California, within a family of six.  After moving to Monrovia, he was attending Pasadena Junior College when the war broke out.  He and his family were incarcerated at the Pomona Fairgrounds assemble center and later sent to the relocation camp at Heart Mountain where he joined Emi and Koshiyama as a resister.  His experience at the camp brought about a realization that patriotism can be expressed in many ways, but the principles of the U.S. Constitution can be expressed only through freedom, compassion, social justice, and human dignity.

 

Paul Tsuneishi one of 10 children born to his Issei parents.  His father was a farmer who also held a life-long interest in haiku and poetry.  Paul was also attending Pasadena Junior College and was “1A” with his draft board when the war erupted. While his family also was imprisoned in Heart Mountain, he and his brothers chose to serve in the Military Intelligence Service during the war. After the war, Tsuneishi became active in the civil rights movement serving as a board member of the San Fernando Valley NAACP and later became a member of the Japanese American Citizen League and the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations (NCRR) which sought an official apology from the government for the mass incarceration.  It was during that service that he became aware of Frank Emi, Yosh Kuromiya, and the other resisters.  He became their supporter then and remains so today.