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ABSTRACT
The musical Allegiance was inspired by the childhood of actor-activist George Takei, a Japanese American whose family was incarcerated by the United States government in ‘war relocation camps’ during World War II. Performed in both New York and London, the play is a rare popular depiction of Japanese detention – a chapter of American history that is simultaneously present and hidden in U.S. public imagination. The musical underscores the realities of racial discrimination that rendered Japanese Americans vulnerable to rights abuses and asks whether a citizen must prove one’s loyalty. Thinking through the ‘absent presence’ of Japanese American incarceration by viewing performances such as Allegiance is a vital step for acknowledging the precariousness of American citizenship and for preventing human rights abuses in the future. Today, this play serves as a cautionary tale for the United States as anti-Asian hatred spikes and citizenship stripping among naturalized American citizens increases.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Takei’s most famous role was that of Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise on the original Star Trek series. In addition to his acting career, Takei has been active in local Los Angeles politics, supports a variety of social causes, is a passionate advocate of LGBTQ+ rights, and has a loyal social media following. Yvette Chin, ‘Takei, George Hosato (1937–)’ in Jonathan HX Lee (ed), Japanese Americans: The History and Culture of a People (ABC-CLIO 2018).
2 ‘Allegiance’ (Playbill) <https://playbill.com/productions/allegiance-longacre-theatre-vault-0000014103> accessed 19 May 2023.
3 ibid.
4 ‘George Takei’s Allegiance’ (Charing Cross Theatre) <https://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/theatre/george-takei-s-allegiance> accessed 19 May 2023. The author attended the matinee performance of Allegiance at London’s Charing Cross Theatre on 22 March 2023.
5 Chin (n 1) 400.
6 In this article, I use the terms ‘incarceration’ and ‘detention’ to describe the removal of Japanese Americans to relocation camps. This differs from the commonly used term ‘internment’, which does not accurately describe the nature and severity of these U.S. policies. The term ‘internment’ is only used when it appears in direct quotes.
7 Caroline Chung Simpson, An Absent Presence: Japanese Americans in Postwar American Culture, 1945–1960 (Duke University Press 2001) 2.
8 ibid 4.
9 Elena Tajima Creef, Imaging Japanese America: The Visual Construction of Citizenship, Nation, and the Body (New York UP 2004) 4.
10 ibid 9.
11 Lindsey N Kingston, ‘Statelessness as a Lack of Functioning Citizenship’ (2014) 19 Tilburg Law Review 127. See also, Lindsey N Kingston, Fully Human: Personhood, Citizenship, and Rights (OUP 2019).
12 Mae M Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton UP 2004) 175.
13 ibid.
14 Gad Guterman, Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law: A Theatre of Undocumentedness (Palgrave Macmillan 2014) 17.
15 Chung Simpson (n 7).
16 The legal exclusion of Japanese immigration to the U.S. began in 1907 and occurred in stages. Key restrictions included Executive Order 589 (aimed at stopping the flow of Japanese immigrants from Hawai’i to California); the Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907–08 (a series of notes between the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the U.S. Department of State in which Japan agreed to stop issuing passports to Japanese laborers for entry into the U.S.); the termination of the picture bride practice in 1920 (limiting marriages and family formation among Japanese immigrants); and the Japanese exclusion clause to the Immigration Act of 1924 (which excluded ‘aliens ineligible for citizenship’ – notably, the U.S. Supreme Court had held that Japanese immigrants were non-white and therefore ineligible for citizenship). Daniel H Inouye, ‘Japanese American Exclusion’ in Jonathan HX Lee (ed), Japanese Americans: The History and Culture of a People (ABC-CLIO 2018) 46–50.
17 It is notable that by the interwar period, second-generation Japanese (Nisei) had assimilated more broadly with mainstream American culture than their first-generation family members. Still often treated as ‘foreign and alien’, younger Japanese Americans nevertheless felt generational divides that became ‘even more fracturing’ during incarceration. Yvette Chin, ‘Internment, World War II’ in Jonathan HX Lee (ed), Japanese Americans: The History and Culture of a People (ABC-CLIO 2018) 33.
18 Chin (n 17); ‘Japanese-American Incarceration during World War II’ (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 24 January 2022) <www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation> accessed 21 May 2023; ‘Japanese American Incarceration’ (The National WWII Museum) <https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/japanese-american-incarceration> accessed 21 May 2023.
19 Chin (n 17) 35.
20 Saara Kekki, Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain: Networks, Power, and Everyday Life (University of Oklahoma Press 2022) 2, 9.
21 ‘Americans and the Holocaust’ (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) <https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/main/us-public-opinion-on-japanese-internment-1942> accessed 21 May 2023.
22 Art Swift, ‘Gallup Vault: WWII-Era Support for Japanese Internment’ (Gallup, 31 August 2016) <https://news.gallup.com/vault/195257/gallup-vault-wwii-era-support-japanese-internment.aspx> accessed 21 May 2023.
23 Kekki (n 20) 123.
24 ibid.
25 Ngai (n 12) 183.
26 Chin (n 17) 38; ‘Japanese Americans at Manzanar’ (National Park Service), https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/historyculture/japanese-americans-at-manzanar.htm> accessed 18 February 2024.
27 Kekki (n 20) 124.
28 ibid 2.
29 ibid 124.
30 ibid 125–26.
31 ibid 126.
32 ibid 128.
33 ibid 123.
34 Note that while most of the play’s characters are fictionalized, Masaoka is a genuine historical figure. The JACL formed in the late 1920s and fought against citizenship bans for Japanese Americans during the interwar period. Chin (n 17) 38. Yet the organization is often remembered negatively for its actions during World War II. Members of the Los Angeles branch of the JACL reported to federal U.S. agents on alleged activities at the Manzanar War Relocation Camp in California, for instance, fueling resentment and resistance. Terumi Rafferty-Osaki, ‘Manzanar Riot (1942)’ in Jonathan HX Lee (ed), Japanese Americans: The History and Culture of a People (ABC-CLIO 2018) 85. JACL leadership also criticized No-No Boys and draft resisters, labeling them as dishonorable and cowardly. Lauren S Morimoto, ‘No-No Boys’ in Jonathan HX Lee (ed), Japanese Americans: The History and Culture of a People (ABC-CLIO 2018) 89.
35 Charles Isherwood, ‘Review: “Allegiance,” a Musical History Lesson about Interned Japanese-Americans’ The New York Times (New York, 8 November 2015) <www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/theater/review-allegiance-a-musical-history-lesson-about-interned-japanese-americans.html> accessed 19 May 2023 para 1.
36 Nick Curtis, ‘George Takei’s Allegiance at the Charing Cross Theatre Review—It’s Great to See the Star Trek Icon in London’ Evening Standard (London, 18 January 2023) <www.standard.co.uk/culture/theatre/george-takei-allegiance-charing-cross-theatre-review-star-trek-sulu-london-b1053813.html> accessed 19 May 2023 para 1.
37 Zachary Stewart, ‘Allegiance: George Takei Stars in a New Musical about Japanese Internment during World War II’ (TheaterMania, 8 November 2015) <www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/allegiance_74879.html> accessed 19 May 2023 para 9.
38 Arifa Akbar, ‘George Takei’s Allegiance Review—Shocking History Given Musical Uplift’ The Guardian (London, 18 January 2023) <www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/jan/18/george-takei-allegiance-review-musical> accessed 19 May 2023 para 3.
39 Emily Colborn-Roxworthy, ‘“Manzanar, the Eyes of the World Are upon You”: Performance and Archival Ambivalence at a Japanese American Internment Camp’ (2007) 59(2) Theatre Journal 189.
40 Chin (n 17) 37.
41 Chung Simpson (n 7) 9.
42 Ngai (n 12) 187.
43 Patrick Weil, The Sovereign Citizen: Denaturalization and the Origins of the American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press 2013) 92.
44 Ngai (n 12) 188.
45 See ibid 188–92.
46 Minoru Kiyota, Beyond Loyalty: The Story of a Kibei (Linda Klepinger Keenan tr, University of Hawaii Press 1997) 111–12 cited in Ngai (n 12) 192.
47 Amanda Frost, You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers (Beacon Press 2021) 129.
48 By this time, civil rights lawyer Wayne Collins had obtained a temporary injunction on deportations by arguing that the renunciation of detainees’ citizenship was inherently coercive and counter to the U.S. Constitution – but it was too late for Kurihara and thousands of others. ibid 129–30.
49 ibid 130.
50 ibid 132–33.
51 Jennifer Lee, ‘Confronting the Invisibility of Anti-Asian Racism’ (The Brookings Institution, 18 May 2022) <www.brookings.edu/articles/confronting-the-invisibility-of-anti-asian-racism> accessed 22 May 2023 para 5.
52 ‘STAATUS Index Report 2022’ (LAAUNCH Foundation 2022) <https://staatus-index.s3.amazonaws.com/STAATUS%20Index%202022%20Report.pdf> accessed 22 May 2023.
53 Although anti-Asian discrimination in the United States was pronounced, it is important to acknowledge that discrimination was a global problem during the Covid-19 pandemic. Human rights watchdogs warned of rising anti-Asian racism and xenophobia worldwide. ‘Covid-19 Fueling Anti-Asian Racism and Xenophobia Worldwide’ (Human Rights Watch, 12 May 2020) <www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide> accessed 21 May 2023. In May 2020, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that ‘the pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering’ and urged governments to ‘act now to strengthen the immunity of our societies against the virus of hate’. ibid para 1.
54 ‘“If We Stay Silent, the Violence Continues”’ (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 22 March 2022) <www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2022/03/if-we-stay-silent-violence-continues> accessed 21 May 2023.
55 Michelle Chen, ‘“She Could Have Been Your Mother”: Anti-Asian Racism a Year after Atlanta Spa Shootings’ The Guardian (London, 16 March 2022) <www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/16/anti-asian-racism-atlanta-spa-shootings-anniversary> accessed 22 May 2023.
56 Lee (n 51).
57 Justin T Huang and others, ‘The Cost of Anti-Asian Racism during the Covid-19 Pandemic’ (2023) 7 Nature Human Behavior 682.
58 Yulin Hswen and others, ‘Association of “#covid19” versus “#chinesevirus” with Anti-Asian Sentiments on Twitter: March 9–23, 2020’ (2021) 111 American Journal of Public Health 956.
59 Lee (n 51).
60 Quoted in Liz Mineo, ‘The Scapegoating of Asian Americans’ The Harvard Gazette (Cambridge, 24 March 2021) <https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/03/a-long-history-of-bigotry-against-asian-americans> accessed 21 May 2023 para 3.
61 LAAUNCH Foundation (n 52) 32.
62 ibid 33.
63 ibid.
64 For an excellent discussion of citizenship stripping in the United States, see Frost (n 47). Her historical examples include stripping U.S. citizenship from racial minorities, Confederate leaders, suffragists, and political enemies of the state.
65 Weil (n 43) 1.
66 ‘Unmaking Americans: Insecure Citizenship in the United States’ (Open Society Justice Initiative, September 2019) <www.justiceinitiative.org/publications/unmaking-americans> accessed 21 May 2023.
67 ibid 6.
68 ibid 12.
69 Katie Benner, ‘Justice Dept. Establishes Office to Denaturalize Immigrants’ The New York Times (New York, 26 February 2020) <www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/us/politics/denaturalization-immigrants-justice-department.html> accessed 22 May 2023.
70 ‘Open Society Justice Initiative v. the United States Department of Justice et al.’ (Open Society Justice Initiative) <www.justiceinitiative.org/litigation/open-society-justice-initiative-v-the-united-states-department-of-justice-et-al> accessed 22 May 2023.
71 ibid.
72 Theresa Vargas, 2023, ‘A Doctor Tried to Renew his Passport. Now He’s No Longer a Citizen’ The Washington Post (Washington, DC, 25 November 2023) <https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/11/25/virginia-doctor-passport-citizenship-nightmare/> accessed 17 February 2024.
73 Quoted in ibid, para 3, 8.
74 Chung Simpson (n 7).