On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the compulsory removal of "all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast." Two months and 12 days before, Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, launching the United States into World War II.
Over the next six months, the U.S. government incarcerated more than 120,000 Japanese Americans—almost 70,000 of whom were American-born citizens—without charges, separating them from their homes, businesses, and property and imprisoning them in horse stalls, cowsheds, and other facilities meant to hold livestock.
Most would remain there until 1945. "The incarceration of Japanese Americans is considered one of the most atrocious violations of American civil rights in the 20th century," notes History.com.
"In my high school history book, [the internment of Japanese Americans] was covered in literally one paragraph," recalls choreographer Robyn Mineko Williams, whose maternal grandparents, Francis Akira Nishimura and Nancy Hisako Nishimura, were both sent to camps during World War II. "My grandma and her two sisters were born in California and lived in a beautiful house in Long Beach. When the war came, they were relocated to Jerome, Arkansas.
" Incarcerated as a teen and released on her 18th birthday, Williams's grandmother attended college in Philadelphia before moving to Chicago, a postwar hub for Japanese Americans. Her life and story inspired Williams to create Hisako's House, performed in the house her grandparents built in the 1950s in Lombard, Illinois. Hisako's House 8/16-8/25: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; no show Fri 8/23; the Nishimura residence, 1S140 Pine Lane, Lombard, robynminekowilliams.
com/see, $40 ($80 for performance and "family meal" on Sat 8/24). The house is not ADA accessible. Although Williams was often at her grandparents' home while growing up, they were reticent about their experiences.
"It was always called camp. It was never called..
. Irene Hsiao.
