September, 1999, ATLANTA — Last month I marveled at the myriad ways in which we are now interconnected technologically -- satellite communication, supersonic transportation and the internet (see "What's New" for August). On a recent trip to Atlanta I experienced the substance of our human interconnectedness more profoundly than I have ever felt before.
As a trustee of the Japanese American National Museum, I flew to Atlanta for the opening of two of our traveling exhibits, "America's Concentration Camps" and "Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers."
"America's Concentration Camps" is an exhibit on a dark chapter of American history that is also a story of my early boyhood. When I was 4 years old, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. was plunged into the fires of World War II. Our nation -- despite its ideals -- failed to draw the distinction between the imperialism of Japan and the citizenship of Americans of Japanese ancestry. With no charges and no trial, but simply based on race, Japanese Americans were forcibly rounded up from our homes on the West Coast and herded into 10 barbed wire camps in some of the most god-forsaken parts of the country.
As detailed in my autobiography To the Stars, I was taken with my family from our home in Los Angeles to a camp in the swamps of Arkansas. A year later we were moved to a desolate, wind-swept dry lakebed in northern California near the Oregon border. Four years of my childhood were spent confined behind the barbed wire fences of American concentration camps. Not until the end of the war did we return to Los Angeles.
For my parents, it was the most horrific experience of their lives. Everything was lost — property, business and, most of all, freedom. As astonishing as this story may seem to many Americans, it did happen right here in this country. The "America's Concentration Camps" exhibit had closed at the Ellis Island Museum in New York after a year-long run and opened in August at Atlanta's William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum.
A second exhibit, "Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers," is another extraordinary story with an ironic linkage with the Jewish community. Despite the incarceration of their families, an amazing number of young Japanese American men and women put on the uniforms of the U.S. military and fought with uncommon valor in both the European and Pacific theaters of the war. The all-Japanese American, 442nd Regimental Combat Team returned from the battlefields of Europe as the single most decorated American military outfit.
A strange irony of this war, however, is that another Japanese American outfit, the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, forced open the gates to Dachau, the Nazi death camp that held Jewish, Gypsy and homosexual inmates from throughout Europe. While their own families were confined behind American barbed wire fences, these Japanese American soldiers were liberating the prisoners of the Nazis from their barbed wire incarceration. Certainly, the American concentration camps came nowhere close to the grotesque horrors the Japanese American soldiers found in the Nazi death camps. Providentially, there was no American policy of systematic elimination of people. But these Japanese American soldiers undoubtedly felt some poignancy in their linkage with the Jewish prisoners.
I certainly felt this linkage as I mingled among the people gathered for the opening of the exhibits at the Breman Jewish Heritage Museum. After the formal program where I shared the stage with Daniel Inouye, the war hero and U.S. Senator from Hawaii, my duty was to informally impart some of my childhood memories with the people in attendance as I moved among the exhibits. I found myself in turn deeply moved and enlightened by the stories that the Jewish people there shared with me of relatives lost to the Nazi holocaust. There is a horrific difference of degree in our stories but the lesson to be learned from both our histories is a common one. Bigotry combined with hysteria is the hideous ingredient of massive injustice.
This very same lesson was underscored the following day on a visit to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Atlanta, an important landmark of the American civil rights movement. Dr. King's birthplace is there, as is the Ebinezer Baptist Church where he, his father and his grandfather preached. His marble tomb rests on an island in the middle of a calm reflecting pool. Across the street is a museum of Dr. King's life and the civil rights movement.
As I moved through the exhibits, I was struck again by our interconnectedness. Bigotry takes on many forms. It manifests itself in different ways. Dr. King and the civil rights movement challenged the stony face of institutionalized bigotry. But he also confronted the bigotry and violence of his own people -- the rage that rises out of abject despair. His courage in facing down both the Black Panthers as well as a Sheriff "Bull" Connors, the personifications of racism in both races, was profoundly inspiring. He refused to be lowered to the depths of any bigot -- black or white. He was a firm apostle of non-violent social change.
I remembered a long ago day in the 60s, when I met Dr. King. I was performing in a civil rights musical titled "Fly Blackbird" in Los Angeles. The cast was asked to sing a few numbers from the show at a huge rally where Dr. King was to be the main speaker. It was a massive gathering at the L. A. Sports Arena. When he spoke, Dr. King's words connected mightily. He transported the crowd with his soaring eloquence. It was after this speech that we were escorted to Dr. King's dressing room. I will never forget this meeting. I remember taking his proffered hand. I remember the thrill of the human connection with an extraordinary man. Through his touch, I felt somehow linked to his ideals, his vision and his courage. It was this linkage that surely strengthened my participation in the civil rights movement. It was certainly this inspiration that galvanized me toward the movement to gain redress for Japanese Americans for our incarceration during World War II. It was his faith in the power of the American system and its ideals that invigorated me. And in 1988 -- more than four decades late, but ultimately nevertheless, this nation acknowledged its terrible mistake and Congress passed the redress bill for the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. Dr. King's spirit was there with me in this struggle as well.
Our lives and our communities are not separate. We are inextricably interlinked. What happens to one group impacts another. Yes, we may live in an amazing technologically interconnected world. But ultimately, what gives substance to the technology is our human interconnection.
April, 2000, PASADENA, CA - The press conference theater was standing room only and a buzz of expectation was in the air. On stage, seated at a conference table, were Grace Lee Whitney, Commander Rand of "Star Trek VI," Susan Sackett, Gene Roddenberry's long-time executive assistant, and me. Russ Haslage, the leader and organizer par excellence of the Excelsior campaign, was standing with a microphone at the ready as the moderator. All of us wore black Excelsior T-shirts. Suddenly, Russ shouted out. "Excelsior!" The audience roared back in unison. "Excelsior!" A few fists shot up into the air. It was almost like a revival meeting.
This press event, at the huge Grand Slam Convention in Pasadena, was part of Haslage's strategy to convince Paramount Studios to do the next Star Trek television series based on the adventures of the U.S.S. Excelsior with Captain Sulu.
The people in the audience were not only American, but from all over the world - including Brazil, Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain and wherever else Star Trek had touched and inspired the viewers. A bit of history was present in the person of Bjo Trimble, who led the charge on the initial "Star Trek Lives" campaign to revive the show after its cancellation by NBC in 1969. The overwhelming sense of the people assembled there was a chorus of agreement. "We want Gene Roddenberry's shining vision back. We want the Excelsior and Captain Sulu back on the air!" It was impressive, flattering and humbling.
I never cease being astonished by the phenomenon of Star Trek fans. The passion of the fans from the very beginning in 1966 has not only remained constant but has grown and intensified over the years and the generations. That passion has been the singular force that drove the course of Star Trek's history throughout. After cancellation of the original series, it was fan effort that brought Star Trek back 10 years later as a major feature film. When the studio announced that "Star Trek - The Motion Picture" would be the only film because of the enormous cost over-runs, it was the unexpectedly explosive fan support at the box office that produced the series of Star Trek sequels.
When a producer decided that the 25th anniversary sixth film would be a prequel going back to the Starfleet Academy days of our heroes, thus recasting the beloved characters with younger actors, it was fan outrage that ultimately drove this producer off the studio lot and put the show back on course with my favorite Star Trek film, "Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country" directed by Nick Meyer. And, once again, the fans have become galvanized. Again, they have grabbed the helm to re-direct the course of Star Trek. Again, they are sending their message loudly and clearly. They want Gene Roddenberry's bright vision of the future back as Star Trek.
The fans have demonstrated time and again that they are the real proprietors of the Star Trek phenomenon. At every turning point in the history of Star Trek, they have ultimately prevailed -- against network cancellation, against studio executive pessimism and even against a producer's decision. They have prevailed because they have defined, established and sustained the Star Trek marketplace. And for the studio, that has got to be the Ferengi bottom line.
It puzzles me that the fans must continue to remind the studio powers-that-be of this simple fact: Star Trek fans rule!
May, 2000, NEW YORK - This has been a month of travel and tri-city theater going. I flew from home in Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., for my commission meetings, then on to Manhattan for the weekend. And wherever I am, theater is something I search out. It is my refreshment, my muse and my passion.
Before I left Los Angeles, I had taken in two wonderful productions, the Odyssey Theater Company's interpretation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in contemporary dress and an imaginative new play based on the myths of Ovid, "Metamorphosis," by Mary Zimmerman at the Mark Taper Forum. Even before I began my trip to the East, I was transported back and forth through time by both productions with their ever-compelling tales that still resonate with such contemporary relevance. To quote Mary Zimmerman, "Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths."
Then on to Washington, D.C., for the meetings that consumed most of my time there. On the last night, I joined friends for dinner and theater. My friend Marc Okrand sits on the board of the Washington Shakespeare Company and the play we were to see that night was its interpretation -- in collaboration with the African Continuum Theater -- of Shakespeare's "As You Like It." And I liked it! It was delightful. It was very today. Have you ever heard iambic pentameter spoken to hip-hop rhythm? Can you see the forest of Arden in New York's Central Park? And can you imagine the frolickers in that park as Blacks, Whites, Asians and Latinos? I saw it, I heard it, and I was thoroughly enchanted by it. Old Will can be so now! Shakespeare was vibrantly multi-ethnic in his infinite variety.
The theatrical offerings of New York can be overwhelming in volume as well as in diversity. One has to be selective -- and lucky. Tickets for new Broadway shows can be enormously difficult to get. I was very lucky. I was able to secure great tickets to three dazzling new productions. The first night was Julie Taymor's stylish "The Green Bird." The next was a matinee of Elton John's and Tim Rice's rock version of "Aida." And the final evening was the highly praised import from London, the Royal National Theater's production of "Copenhagen."
Julie Taymor is the boldly inventive director who created the big Disney smash of a few seasons back, "Lion King." She has the gift of taking the conventions of ancient theater such as masks, marionettes and shadow puppets and magically transforming them into the language of today's theater as she did with the Disney hit. With "The Green Bird," she used the style of the old Italian, Comdia del Arte with its cast of stock characters in masks and comically exaggerated costumes to create an entertaining evening of Broadway theater. As much fun as the style was, however, the story was as rambling as a tale told by an over-enthused Italian raconteur.
The tragic love story of Aida, the Nubian princess, is one that lends itself to extravagant production excesses. Some opera productions have even had real elephants and camels parading on stage. Elton John's and Tim Rice's "Aida" is also richly produced but, unlike other Broadway musicals, there are no chandeliers crashing, helicopters landing or other show-stoppingly spectacular effects. The effects used are imaginative and organic to the plot and the characters. The satire on the obsession some women have with high fashion is dead on and the fashion effects are hilariously, fabulously spectacular. The effect of looking down on a huge oval pool with swimmers languorously moving about in the water is pure stage magic. And the music is not only beautiful but has deep resonances beyond the love story. The lovely song "Elaborate Lives" could be taken as a cautionary commentary on our present affluent society. The bookending of the play with contemporary scenes in the Egyptian gallery of some museum seem to underscore the story's relevance to our times. At the core is a deeply moving tragic love story sung and acted by three brilliant performers. Heather Headley as Aida, Adam Pascal as the hero, Radames, and Sherie Rene Scott as the Princess Amneris are all shining stars.
Perhaps the most impressive play was the London import from the National Theater, "Copenhagen." It is based on an actual event but moves beyond that to explore issues of morality, nationality, personal responsibility and the mysteries of the human psyche. The central event is a meeting between Niels Bohr, the brilliant Nobel Prize-winning physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb and his former student, Werner Heisenberg, also a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and a Nazi. That they met in 1941 in Copenhagen during the war is known fact. Why Heisenberg wanted to see his mentor and what they discussed is unknown. Michael Frayn, the playwright, moves us back and forth in time to speculate from different vantage points on the motives, the discussions and the reactions of the brilliant but conflicted scientists at that meeting. "Copenhagen" was theater at its finest.
American theater at the beginning of this century is vibrantly alive. It is inventive and pertinent. It has substance as well as style. It is finding new theater languages to interpreting classic theatrical forms. It is thoughtful and provocative. And it is fun.
What's next on my busy theater calendar? I'm looking forward to East West Players' production of Stephen Sondheim's "Follies" at the David Henry Hwang Theater in downtown Los Angeles. This musical, directed by Tim Dang, runs from May 17 to June 11. If you're in the L.A. area, why not catch the show?
June, 2000, LOS ANGELES - It was a proud moment for all of us at the Japanese American National Museumwhen we received word that we had been selected as a recipient of a $1.5 million challenge grant from the Ford Foundation. This was not only solid recognition from a distinguished philanthropic foundation for the achievements of a relatively young museum in telling the uniquely American story of the Japanese American experience. This was significant financial support for our still developing endowment. We were delighted.
As a challenge grant, however, we knew that we would have work to do. We had to match the gift two to one. Our challenge was to raise $3 million in three years. I had no idea, though, of a capricious and nerve-racking challenge that I would be facing as well.
As chairman of the national museum, I was to fly to New York, where the Ford Foundation was to present the gift at a dinner. I was to be a speaker on the program together with famed opera star, Beverly Sills, who also happens to be the chairman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. I had always admired Ms. Sills' artistry as well as her private commitment to the arts. To meet her and share the stage with her would be a wonderful personal occasion for me as well.
On the day of the dinner, I caught an early morning American Airlines flight at LAX that was to connect through Chicago. It would get me into Manhattan with time enough to check into the hotel, get dressed and be at the Ford Foundation Building in time for the dinner. The flight was uneventful -- which was good. I have had more than my share of "eventful" flights in my life. We landed at O'Hare Airport in Chicago on schedule, but, as I stepped out of the jetway, an airline representative was there to meet me. He apologetically told me that my connecting flight to New York had been cancelled due to a bad storm between Chicago and New York. But, he assured me, he had booked me on the next flight to New York only an hour later.
I realized that I would have to adjust to the changed circumstances. To make up for the lost time, I thought I had better be dressed for the dinner. So, I got to the Admiral's Club, unpacked as best I could within the confines of a cubicle and struggled out of my casual clothes and into my suit and tie. Dressed and ready for the dinner, I stepped out of the men's room.
As I walked by the flight schedule monitor screen, I gave a quick glance to check on my new connecting flight. CANCELLED, it read. My new connection, too, had been aborted. Trying to suppress my alarm, I got in line at the service desk together with a horde of panic-stricken passengers. The harried reservation clerks announced that the storm had forced the cancellation of all flights going east but that they were working on getting us back in the air as soon as possible. The sky in Chicago looked fine, but I wasn't so sure I wanted to get back up into that sky.
I took up residence in the Admiral's Club for the next six hours waiting anxiously for a break in the storm. Periodically, the airline reps announced that they would, at last, be able to book us on a flight. And just as quickly, they reversed themselves. When they finally told me that they could get me into New York by 2 p.m. the following day, I realized that I had failed this part of the challenge grant. It was pointless for me to go on. Our museum's executive director, Irene Hirano, had flown the day before and she could accept the gift from the Ford Foundation. I took the next flight going west through calm skies and returned home to Los Angeles.
That was two weeks ago. Last weekend, I flew again, this time to a Star Trek convention in Tampa, Florida, the annual Vulcon show organized by Joe Motes and Fernando Martinez. Thankfully, the flight was uneventful. This month, I have trips to San Francisco, then Tokyo, Japan, and Toronto, Canada. The challenges continue to be scheduled.
July, 2000, TORONTO - The theme running through this past month turned out to be interchange; interchange of many kinds - international, cultural, technological and generational. And it had me traveling over half this globe to three nations.
The first country I traveled to was Japan. I am a commissioner on the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, an independent Federal agency that has as its mission, broadly put, to enrich mutual understanding. One of our projects is to utilize the internet by building a site that chronicles the past fifty-year history of the cultural and educational interchange between our two nations. The U.S. working group, of which I am a member, met with our Japanese counterparts to set the basic architecture of the prototype and to outline the content of the site.
Our two-day agenda was fully packed. June was the rainy season in Tokyo and, true to the time of year, it rained both days of our meeting. The air was dense and steamy but, thankfully, air-conditioning made our working time productive. In concert, we set the structure of the project and arrived at mutual agreements on the subjects to be addressed on the site. The bi-national internet interchange project is off to a good start. Our timetable is to have the prototype ready by next spring.
The next day, changing roles, I put on my hat as the Chairman of the Japanese American National Museum for a series of meetings arranged by the Tokyo office of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. Our strategy is to increase tourism by the Japanese to Los Angeles - or people interchange -- by highlighting the Japanese American National Museum. The meetings were with Japanese travel bureaus and agency representatives. Lunch was with about a dozen Japanese travel journalists at a Chinese restaurant. I discovered, however, that my attraction to these people was -- not so much my chairmanship of the Japanese American National Museum -- but as Captain Sulu of Star Trek. One of the journalists even brought his collection of Star Trek books as well as the blueprint of the Starship Enterprise to be autographed. I noted for him that my Captain Sulu uniform from "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" was on display at the Japanese American National Museum. Whatever the occasion, Star Trek is an inevitable part of anything with which I might be associated. As long as my primary mission is served - in this case, increased attendance at the Japanese American National Museum - I am a willing Captain Sulu. Star Trek is a powerful magnet for any good cause.
The next evening, however, was an unadulterated Star Trek event. Russ Haslage of the Excelsior campaign had arranged via the internet for me to meet with a small group of Japanese Star Trek fans that are supporters of the Excelsior campaign for a relaxed evening over sushi. The enthusiasm for a new "Star Trek: Excelsior" television series, it seems, spans this globe.
I discovered that many of the Japanese fans were studying English. So I proposed that we make our evening an opportunity for some linguistic interchange. I promised to speak to them in Japanese if they would try to speak to me in English. It was an engaging evening of lively conversations in broken accents and laughter mixed with mangled syntaxes.
A week in Tokyo seems to fly at warp speed. Before an electrifying performance of Kabuki at the famed Kabuki-za Theater or a day trip to the dazzling new development complexes built on land fill in Yokohama could become fond memories, I found myself on a plane bound for home. I left Tokyo at 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and, after a numbing ten-hour flight, arrived back in Los Angeles at 9 a.m. on that same Saturday morning! I was back before I had even left! Not only was I jet-lagged, I had to live through another Saturday. What unanticipated forms of punishment will warp speed impose?
With only the two Saturdays and a Sunday for recovery back in Los Angeles, I was off to Washington D.C. for a momentous event. Twenty-two Asian American veterans of World War II were to be granted the Medal of Honor, the highest military accolade this country can grant. At the end of the war more than fifty years ago, they had been given the second highest honor, the Silver Star. But because of the prevailing attitudes toward Asian Americans at the time, and especially toward Japanese Americans, the Pentagon was requested to again review the records of the Asian American Silver Star recipients. Twenty-two of them - twenty being Japanese Americans with one Chinese and one Filipino- were found to be worthy of the Medal of Honor. The greatest honor a soldier can receive was to be awarded at a White House ceremony by the President and, on the following day, they were to be inducted into the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon. I was again to represent the Japanese American National Museum at both events and I had the honor of serving as the master of ceremonies of the celebration reception in the evening. But I also had a personal responsibility to be there as well. I owed an enormous debt to these veterans.
The America that I enjoy today is a vastly different world from that before World War II. The opportunities I enjoy today, where Asian Americans can choose to live wherever we want, receive the education for which we qualify, have the freedom to pursue the careers that we want, are possible in large measure because of the gallantry of these extraordinary men. They fought for a nation that had incarcerated their families behind the barbed wires of internment camps. Their country had failed the ideals to which these young men had pledged their allegiance every day in school -- but they had not. Their incredible faith in those ideals and their extraordinary valor changed, not only the course of the war, but the hearts and minds of a nation. I owe so much to them. The legacy of their generation to mine is enormous. I owe my America to them. My pride as an American is solidly based on the awesome price they paid. To witness the seven surviving veterans, some of who are now frail and unsteady in their steps, receiving the Medal of Honor from the President in the White House was a profoundly moving experience. One of them was my friend, U.S. Senator from Hawaii, Daniel Inouye. I will never forget that moment.
A quick shuttle flight for a meeting in New York and I was again back in Los Angeles to perch briefly at home. But two days later, I was back in what is now becoming my second home -- an airline seat - bound for Toronto, Canada. I am working on the narration of a documentary on Canada's effort to develop a new, low-cost and clean source of energy - nuclear fusion.
A sobering fact is that world energy consumption will at least double by the year 2010 - only ten years off. Canada's campaign to develop fusion energy, or energy produced by the combining of atoms -- as opposed to fission, or the splitting of atoms -- is in concert with a consortium of nations. As a citizen of the U.S., but also as a futurist and an environmentalist, I am excited to be participating, if only as an actor-narrator, on this visionary project. I certainly feel I have a duty to make up for the part I have played in my heavy consumption of energy jetting all over our much-beleaguered planet.