Allegiance is an epic story of love, war and heroism set during
the Japanese American internment of World War
II, following the story of the Omura family in the
weeks and years following Pearl Harbor, as they are relocated
from their home in Salinas, California to the Heart Mountain
internment camp in the wastelands of Wyoming.
Their story reflects the deep conflicts of a nation and a people
divided: father Tatsuo, a successful store owner, resists
their unjust internment; mother Kimiko fears for their
future, quietly resigned to their fate; older son James
volunteers in an all-Japanese American army regiment; and younger
son Sam yearns for acceptance by and inclusion in America.
The Omura’s conflicts mirror the larger rift between the Japanese
American Citizens League, which urged cooperation with the
internment and unwavering loyalty to America, and the resisters
of the internment, who steadfastly refused to serve a country
that had put them in concentration camps. This universal story
sheds new light upon a dark, under-explored, and wrenching
chapter of American history. Through the remembrances of Old
Sam and his tutor Gloria, the painful past is
revisited, and at long last, redemption and understanding begin
to heal decades-old wounds.
Allegiance sheds new light upon a dark chapter of American
history. With its moving score, Allegiance connects the
audience with universal themes of love, family and redemption.
In fall of 2008, we were seated by complete coincidence by
George Takei and his husband Brad at an Off-Broadway show,
where a brief conversation revealed a mutual love of
theater. By a second and truly divine coincidence, the very
next day we were seated again by George and Brad at the Broadway
show, In The Heights. At intermission, we
approached George, curious as to why he had been so emotionally
affected by the father’s song in which he laments his inability
to help his daughter in her time of need. George explained
to us that it reminded him of his own father’s frustration at his
inability to help his family during their internment at the
Rohwer Relocation Center in
Arkansas. Over the course of that intermission, George
recounted his personal experience as a child in the internment
camps of America, and we immediately recognized that what we had
just heard was the seed of a profoundly human, great American
story that had yet to be told on the Broadway stage.
Allegiance takes place behind the barbed wires of Heart
Mountain Relocation Center, an internment camp in the
wastelands of Wyoming named for the iconic mountaintop peak that
overlooked it. Japanese-American Sumi-e artist Drue Kataoka conceived the original
logo, an “A” as two simple sumi-e brushstrokes forming a
mountain. The entire original art was realized as a traditional
brushstroke painting.
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