Interviews
Keeping Japanese Performance Arts Alive in the Camps
My mother made friends with a lot of artists, who were dancers and teachers, and so that’s when I began to take Japanese odori, playing the shamisen, doing nagauta, I guess, and I loved it. I mean, I really enjoyed it. I think that if it weren’t for those camp days, I wouldn’t have been interested in the arts or acting. What I really loved was doing kabuki plays. I didn’t understand a word that I was saying, my mother would tell me what the words were, what they meant, and then I would just memorize it. I could read it in katakana, so she would write out the words in katakana, and my favorite was playing Hichidameno Okaru. Well, I remember one line, and it still gives me pleasure because it’s different. It would be “ura-san ka, watasha omae ni moritsubu-sare,” you know, very overly dramatic.
Date: November 8, 2018
Location: California, US
Interviewer: June Berk
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
Explore More Videos
Arriving at Poston
(b. 1930) Half Japanese and grew up in both Japan and the United States.
“A Low Tolerance For Injustice…”
(1938-2020) Japanese American attorney and civil rights activist
How he got on the All-Navy show on Ed Sullivan
(b. 1934) Ukulele player from Hawaii
The riot in Manzanar
(b. 1921) Nisei veteran who served in the occupation of Japan
Father making shell brooches at Topaz
(b. 1934) Award-winning Disney animation artist who was incarcerated at Topaz during WWII
Parents identification as Peruvian Okinawan
Okinawan American whose parents are from Peru.
The lack of discussion about family’s incarceration in Amache
Sansei judge for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in California