George Takei is known worldwide for his portrayal of Lieutenant Sulu in the 1960s television series “Star Trek” and its feature film sequels, but in the last decade he has been working on a project of deeply personal importance. “Allegiance,” is a Broadway musical inspired by the experiences of Japanese-Americans, including Takei’s own family, who were stripped of their possessions and held in internment camps during World War II.
“Allegiance” officially opened on Broadway on Nov. 8, 2015, and ran for three months with Takei playing war hero Sam Kimura in the present day, and Sam’s grandfather, Ojii-chan, in flashbacks.
Takei, 81, will be performing “Ishi Kara Ishi,” a song from “Allegiance,” when he is honored Saturday by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i at its 2018 Sharing the Spirit of Aloha Annual Gala. The event will take place at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort; visit jcch.com Opens in a new tab for details.
In addition, Manoa Valley Theatre plans to stage “Allegiance” during its next season. The Hawaii-premiere production is scheduled to open on March 28, 2019, for a special 10-day run at the Hawaii Theatre Center. Tickets will go on sale later this year at the Hawaii Theatre box office.
We connected with Takei by phone late last month while he was vacationing in London.
JOHN BERGER: When you were here in Honolulu in 2010 for the producers’ audition fundraiser at the home of Mark Wong and Guy Merola, “Allegiance” was a dream in the making. Since then we’ve seen it become a full-length musical, play to good response on the West Coast, and then go to Broadway. Opening on Broadway must have been a great night for you.
GEORGE TAKEI: It was dazzling, and really an unimagined night. I guess we had imagined what it would be like, but there it was, happening in reality, so it was a glorious night.
JB: What part of telling the story on Broadway was most meaningful for you?
GT: I wish that my parents could have experienced it.
When the marquee went up on the Longacre Theatre the thought rushed through my mind, “If only my parents could have been there to see their son’s name — and their surname — going up in lights on Broadway.” It would have been a completion of a fantastic dream.
JB: You developed the roles of old Sam and Ojii-chan and then played them on Broadway and afterward. What were you thinking the first time you saw “Allegiance” as a member of the audience?
GT: That was at the opening of the Boston “Allegiance” [earlier in May of this year], and it’s a funny feeling. It’s very proprietorial about the role that you’ve done, you make it your own, and so the thought was, “I wish it could have been me” (laughs), but I made that decision — that I needed to smell the flowers.
I’d been working straight through for the last five years and I thought, “We need to regenerate the soul.”
JB: A friend of mine, who is also an internment survivor, has told me several times the only people who can really understand what she and her family experienced are other internment survivors. Do you hear from other survivors who want to talk with someone who also experienced life in the camps?
GT: Yes, there are so many, and I’m so glad to see that kind of conversation being stimulated by “Allegiance.” One of the problems has been the fact that for the people who experienced the internment, it was such a painful experience — such a degrading experience, such an enraging experience — that they didn’t want to talk about it.
We have many younger Japanese-Americans come backstage and tell me that their parents or their grandparents had been in a camp. I’d ask them which one and their face was a blank because their parents didn’t talk about it.
JB: You were 5 years old when your family was interned and 8 when it ended. Is there something about the camp experience that stands out?
GT: The remarkable thing about children is that they’re amazingly adaptable. As long as you have two loving parents with you, you adjust to the regimentation and the regularity and the order of imprisonment.
It became routine for me to line up three times a day to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall, and to go with my father and my older brother to bathe in a mass shower, and have a searchlight follow me when I made the night run from my barrack to the latrine.
To 5-year-old me, I thought it was nice that they lit the way for me to pee.
JB: How do you respond to people who say “Allegiance” is a Japanese story?
GT: “Allegiance” — I’ve always said — is an American story, and all Americans should know about it because it was our U.S. Constitution that was so egregiously violated.
When Executive Order 9066 was signed (by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt), we were imprisoned with no due process, no charges (and) no trial. Spreading knowledge of this chapter in American history is important for all Americans.
JB: I didn’t know your name when I saw “PT 109” in 1963, but now everyone who watches it says, “There’s Sulu!” in the scene on the bridge of the Japanese destroyer. How far has Hollywood come in presenting nonstereotypical stories about Asians and Asian-Americans, and in casting Asian actors in roles where race isn’t specified?
GT: When I started back in the 1950s we were portrayed by the media in terms of caricatures and stereotypes, and that was the extent of it. Sessue Hayakawa was considered a handsome leading man in the silent movie days, and Anna May Wong was a beautiful and sexy leading lady, but from the ’30s on, we became stereotypes.
When stories where Asians were central characters, like Pearl Buck’s novel, “The Good Earth,” were made as movies, those roles were played by (Caucasian-Americans) Paul Muni and Luise Rainer — that was called “yellow-face.”
Now we have Asian-American families as the central family in a television series, so we’ve come a long way.
JB: What were your expectations for “Star Trek” when you started working on it in 1966?
GT: I knew when we started filming “Star Trek” that we were working on a quality show. The concept was very imaginative — to metaphorically use science fiction as a vehicle for addressing issues of the time, but my experience was that good shows don’t last very long.
I predicted to Jimmy Doohan that we were going to be proud of the show we were working on, but I didn’t think we were going to be on very long. Most likely about two seasons.
We were canceled after three seasons, but because of the rising popularity of “Star Trek” after cancellation, NBC and Paramount decided to do a one-shot feature film called “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.”
The box office was enormous and so we became a (film) series. “Star Trek” is now 53 years old and still going strong.
“On the Scene” appears weekly in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser Sunday Magazine. Reach John Berger at jberger@staradvertiser.com.
