ABSTRACT
Months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941, an estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast were incarcerated in remote and barren locations in the interior of the United States. Two-thirds of those put in the camps were American-born citizens. Wartime imprisonment, which also affected those of Japanese descent in the then-territory of Hawai’i, and Canada, indelibly changed how Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians understood their place in North America. Chapter four will survey some of the many theatrical presentations of these somber moments in history, including Hiroshi Kashiwagi’s biting one-act play Laughter and False Teeth and the Broadway musical Allegiance. The chapter reflects upon the many different theatrical ways of depicting incarceration, and concludes with a closer examination of one distinctive play, Edward Sakamoto’s Pilgrimage, which explores both the past and the lasting repercussions of racial exclusion in the present.
