Please go to What did you do in the War, Mama?: Kochiyama's Crusaders Film - Thank you!
Summary: What did you do in the War?: Kochiyama's Crusaders is a nonfiction short film that delves into future Human Rights Activist Yuri Kochiyama's early years as a 20-year old newly "interned" Japanese American in the U.S. concentration camps, and the Women's Letter-Writing Campaign ("The Crusaders") that she led to support the Japanese American soldiers during World War II and boost morale. This documentary grew out of the play Bits of Paradise by Marlan Warren, which adapted The Crusaders Scrapbook archived in the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. The film melds interviews with Yuri Kochiyama and three of the original Crusaders with historical footage, original letters, poetry, music, artwork and play excerpts to examine the making of an activist and honor the compassionate human being that Yuri was. Shooting began in 2008, and the film is currently fundraising for post-production costs. To donate or learn more, please contact Marlan at memoircity@gmail.com.
- Yuri Kochiyama (aka "Mary Nakahara")
Interview Excerpt: Yuri Kochiyama remembers WWII soldiers who died. [Unedited]
Scene from Bits of Paradise: Kochiyama's Crusaders by Marlan Warren with Ariel Kayoko LabasanOpening Monologue Adapted From The Diary of Hatsuye Egami. Performance at Rogue Machine Theatre, Hollywood, California
MEET THE ORIGINAL CRUSADERS!
Patricia (Pat) Goto was 11 years old when she began sending penny postcards as a Crusader in Mary Nakahara's Sunday School Class at the Santa Anita Assembly Center (aka "concentration camp"). When we interviewed her, she read from the memoir she wrote in her 80s about her camp life and how deeply "Mary Nakahara" affected her for the rest of her life.
Interview Excerpt: Crusader Patricia Goto Takeshita remembers Mary Nakahara. (Slide Show By Marlan Warren for YouTube)
much needed theatrical examination of the Asian American journey. - Asian Week
Asian Week Review: New play based on Japanese American WWII internment letters
With the commemoration of the bombing of Pearl Harbor fast approaching, local playwright Marlan Warren’s Bits of Paradise arrives at an appropriate time. Based on letters written between Japanese American girls and women in the U.S. internment camps and Japanese American soldiers during World War II, Bits of Paradise is a 20-minute piece that is slated to be a full production one day.
A culmination of eight years of researching and gathering on the subject, Warren takes on a little-known factoid in the history of the war at home. In the play, a cast of seven takes the audience back in time to the nadir of Japanese American morale. A young internee by the name of Yuri Kochiyama (born Mary Nakahara) inspired her friends to start a letter-writing campaign to the Japanese American 442nd regimental combat team to raise the boys’ spirits. The group of letter writers became known as “The Crusaders” and the play, an ode to Kochiyama, comes to fruition onstage as actors read verbatim excerpts from these missives.
The play was a lesson in history for the actors as much as a means to broaden their horizons. “I feel a sense of pride and a sense of identity,” said Jean Franco who portrayed one of the soldiers. “I wouldn’t have known about this part of history if I hadn’t done this project.”
Fifteen-year-old Chanelle Yang, who gives a spirited performance as the young Kochiyama, expressed her honor of playing this role and was inspired by the fact that Kochiyama was in the audience on opening night. (Kochiyama transitioned from writing letters to becoming a crusader of a different type — as an icon in the socio-political activist movement and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee in 2005.)
Not since Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the War (2007) has there been a production in The City depicting the Japanese American experience spawned by F.D.R.’s infamous Presidential Executive Order 9066, which required the internment of all continental Japanese Americans. Bits of Paradise places its footprint on the timeline of a much needed theatrical examination of the Asian American journey.
Bits of Paradise plays on December 1, 7:30 p.m. at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia Street (between 20th and 21st in the Mission District), San Francisco, $7 tickets at the door. No reservations. For more info, call 415-202-0108 or visit themarsh.org/monday
They simply unveil them to the eyes of men.
"We Remember"
