Survivor recalls Japanese camp
75 years later, distrust on rise again in the U.S.
Marion Takehara’s family woke up one day to a government notice posted on their door. They were to move to a temporary stay in horse stalls before being relocated to an internment camp in Colorado, far from their Los Angeles home.
“As a teenager, I was more worried about whether my friends would end up at the same camp,” Takehara recalled.
Signed 75 years ago Sunday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 led to the incarceration of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans, many U.S.-born citizens, following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Now living at Parkway Place, a Houston senior living community, the 91-yearold Takehara spends her time sharing her family’s story of survival at schools and community centers, saying it is pertinent given that fear of the Muslim and immigrant communities in the U.S. echoes sentiments expressed against Japanese-Americans in World War II.
“There was a time we had to go into hiding because we looked like the enemy,” Takehara said. “We feel so sorry for the people who are really suffering right now.”
Takehara was 17 when her family and entire Japanese-predominant neighborhood were uprooted from their homes and forced to sell most of their belongings. Prior to receiving the relocation notice, she recalls her parents avoiding decorating their home with Japanese items as a precautionary measure.
Sense of gaman
Though they spent six months in the camp, Takehara notes that her parents have never once said a bad thing about the U.S. and endured their suffering with gaman, a Japanese term that means enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.
Over the years, Takehara learned to look back at her time in the camp with a sense of gaman herself, using it to help her share her experience with others. Most recently, she spoke at a high school where a Muslim student came up to her to thank her for her story that he said helped him find positivity in the face of discrimination.
Still, she and others believe that this piece of American history needs to be put in the spotlight. That’s the same sentiment shared by the creators of the 2015 Broadway musical “Allegiance,” starring George Takei of “Star Trek” fame. The show is loosely based on Takei’s own experience in an internment camp.
Lorenzo Thione, a lead producer and writer of the show, said that when team members started working on the project in 2008, they never could have imagined how American politics would play out with xenophobic rhetoric and an “us vs. them” worldview taking center stage.
He noted how much of the public discussion of the Muslim and immigration communities in the U.S. today is reminiscent of the dialogue that led to mass incarcerations in the 1940s.
Trump was a no-show
While the show was still on Broadway, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said in a Time magazine interview that he wasn’t sure whether he would have supported Japanese internment camps. Thione said that the show’s team, in response, held a seat for Trump for 70 performances so that he could learn how the camps affected families. Henever attended, Thione said.
A filmed version of the show will screen in theaters nationwide today through Fathom Events, including screenings in Houston at the Houston Marq*E Stadium 23, Willowbrook 24 and First Colony 24.
“We hope (the show) serves as a lens through which people can see the current political climate and learn from the past so that it never happens again,” Thione said.
Takehara said she is frequently invited to speak at community gatherings and is excited to see the diversity of audiences who wish to learn more about the dark chapter in U.S. history.
And to communities currently fearful of discrimination and hatred against them, Takehara has some advice.
“I would say if you have faith in America and what it stands for, then it’s going to be OK,” Takehara said.