What to Take Away from Allegiance as It Ends Its Broadway Run

Allegiance just ended its relatively short run on Broadway last Sunday, but George Takei is looking at continuing the musical elsewhere. The show, for those of you who don’t know, starred George Takei, Lea Salonga, and Telly Leung, as members of a Japanese-American family incarcerated into an internment camp during World War II. Takei plays the grandfather of the family, as well as the older version of Leung’s character, Sam Kimura. Salonga plays the daughter, Kei Kimura, and Christopheren Nomura the father.

Allegiance not only created roles for non-white actors, it centers around Asian-Americans during an episode of American history that isn’t always taught, or taught dishonestly. Takei’s words in the Star Tribune, “This is an American story. We may look different from what is popularly conceived of as American, but we are Americans” express exactly why this musical is so important. Takei, whose family was incarcerated, spent much of his childhood in Rohwer War Relocation Center and then Tule Lake and parts of the musical were based on his own experiences. Takei taking his experience and this history and making art out of it is amazing, and you could see much of the audience crying for the majority of the show.

The musical not only illustrates the dehumanizing treatment of Japanese Americans during this time, it also showed the damage it did to the Japanese American community. Including Mike Masaoka, president of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and his controversial role as a “voice” for Japanese Americans at the time, especially struck me. Masaoka, who was not interned, advocated a full cooperation policy and fought for giving Japanese Americans an opportunity to “prove” their loyalty by joining the U.S. armed forces (these segregated units were often given the most dangerous missions). In the musical, Sam immediately takes the opportunity to serve and “prove” his American-ness while others, like Kei and her eventual husband Frankie Suzuki (portrayed by the talented Michael K. Lee), resent the United States for violating their rights and then asking for their lives.

While most people know of Japanese internment, they might not know about the loyalty questionnaire, which included these two questions:

• “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?”
• “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?”

Those who answered “no” to both these questions were referred to as “no-no boys” and sent off to Tule Lake (a maximum security and labor camp). No-no boys dealt with huge amounts of stigma as traitors or cowards, even after the war was over. Even when candid conversations about internment occur, the no-no boys are still sometimes skipped over because of these persistent stigmas.

At the center of the story is the Japanese term gaman, which means to endure with strength and dignity. The musical is about how people endured that suffering, some with baseball and dances, with new loves, with planting a garden, and some with protest and defying the questionnaire. The story wants to reconcile the bonds within the Japanese American communities that were fractured and hurt through internment and to educate. Allegiance comes at a really important time to de-mythologize American history. One particular scene takes place right after we hear the radio and sounds of the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the grim atmosphere is abruptly disrupted when three American soldiers come out and sing an outrageously upbeat song called “Victory” with a flag and an image of the White House in the back.

November last year, several politicians responded to the refugee crisis by entertaining the idea of bringing back a similar policy of internment, which speaks not only to American education’s refusal to confront its own dark past, but also to the horrifying way these racist ideas reappear if we don’t talk about them.

George Takei saved a seat for Donald Trump almost every performance, though Trump never took him up on the offer. I think it’s a show everyone can benefit from.

According to the Star Tribune, Takei said “I know it has a life” and mentioned potential touring plans or bringing the show to the west coast. Producer and co-book writer Lorenzo Thione said, “This is just a jumping-off point for the story to continue to be told. Obviously we’re disappointed that we can’t continue to tell this story on Broadway but the reasons are so external to the show itself.” I hope that Allegiance will continue to show elsewhere, because it is an important, undeniably American story.

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Charline Jao

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