Manzanar: Our Town
by Hisashi Inoue
A humorous, yet powerful story about five women of Japanese descent finding their voice during WWII.
The Story
Incarcerated at a camp in Manzanar, California during WWII, five women of Japanese descent - a journalist, a rokyoku performer, a stage magician, a singer, and a film actress - are tasked with staging a propaganda play that paints the camp as a dreamland.
Characters
“Manzanar: Our Town” is a play about the resilience and solidarity of women in the face of adversity.
Sophia Okazaki
31, a Kibei Nisei--a Japanese American who was educated in Japan and came back to the U.S.
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She’s the editor-in-chief of a Japanese newspaper in Los Angeles, as well as the leader of an amateur theater company.
Otome Amatsu
38, an Issei--1st generation immigrant from Japan
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A female rokyoku (traditional Japanese singsong storytelling)
performer who used to be a migrant farm worker on the West Coast.
Sachiko Saito
Late 20s, a Nisei-- 2nd generation Japanese-American
A stage magician.
She speaks almost an unnatural degree of “You-Me English” (a mixture of Japanese and English often used by Japanese immigrants)
Lillian Takeuchi
18, Nisei,
A freshman at Pasadena College by day, a singer at Los Angeles
hotels by night.
Joyce Tachibana
22, Kibei Nisei
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A film actress who forsook her dream job to combat prejudiced portrayals of Japanese people.
About
Manzanar: Our Town is a bilingual, multidisciplinary play about the Japanese-American incarceration during WWII. Through a fusion of Rokyoku storytelling, American and Japanese songs, and theatrical narrative that blends humor with history, the play tells a powerful yet heartwarming story of empowerment: finding one’s voice and standing together to overcome adversity.
Originally written by renowned Japanese playwright Hisashi Inoue and translated into English by James Yaegashi, this project brings the first English-language production to the United States.
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