The journey that started for Hawaii with a producers’ audition for potential backers at the Makiki Heights home of Mark Wong and Guy Merola in 2010 reached its long-awaited destination Thursday as Manoa Valley Theatre’s production of “Allegiance” opened a two-week run at the Hawaii Theatre.

The long wait was well worth it.

The musical, inspired by the World War II internment camp experiences of actor George Takei and his family, had its world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in 2012 and opened on Broadway in 2015 with Takei and Tony winner Lea Salonga.

Under Paul Mitri’s direction, MVT’s Hawaii premiere of “Allegiance” scores high as straightforward entertainment and for its highly charged political statement about how U.S. citizens were deprived of their freedom for no reason other than their ethnicity and place of residency, and how legal immigrants were pressured to renounce their Japanese citizenship but denied the opportunity to take American citizenship in its place.

The imprisoned Kimura family is being torn apart. Ethan Le Phong stars as Young Sammy Kimura, who wants to prove his loyalty to the United States by serving in a racially segregated combat unit. (Phong played the same role opposite Takei as Old Sam in “Allegiance’s” post-Broadway run in Los Angeles last year.)

Sammy’s widower father, Tatsuo, played with stoic pride by Bradford Kaliko Yamamoto, was forced to sell the family farm for 20 cents on the dollar and insists the American government’s war is not their fight. Sammy’s older sister, Kei (Kristian Lei), falls in love with angry activist Frankie Suzuki (Miguel Cadoy II), who would rather rot in prison than fight for the government that has imprisoned him.

Dann Seki rounds out the Kimura family with a nicely detailed performance as Sammy’s pragmatic grand­father, known by the Japanese honorific Ojii-chan. Seki shows greater range playing Old Sam in the present-day scenes that bookend the flashbacks. Old Sam is a bitter, highly decorated war veteran who has been alienated from his family for more than 50 years.

Caucasian nurse Hannah Campbell’s involvement with the Kimura family reminds us that while America was fighting fascism in Europe, Nazi-style race laws prohibiting interracial marriage were being enforced in more than half the country. Expatriate islander Kathleen Stuart plays Hannah with a delightful balance of light comedy and romantic gravity.

Her two duets with Phong are among of the show’s brightest musical moments. The first is a beautiful bit of well-timed comedy; the second is straight-up romantic.

Lei’s big solo in Act 1, “Higher,” got the loudest and longest applause on opening night, and she joined Cadoy for two showcase duets in Act 2.

Devon Nekoba has a prominent supporting role as Mike Matsumoto, a community spokesman who advocates unquestioning collaboration with the Roosevelt administration’s policies as the best way of proving ethnic Japanese are loyal Americans. Charismatic Dwayne Saka­guchi is a strong presence as Matsuoka’s young brother, and Kyle Malis successfully plays against type as the assorted Caucasian villains who bring various types of grief to the unjustly imprisoned Japanese and Japanese- Americans.