Play explores role of Japanese Americans who helped liberate Dachau
ANNE RACKHAM
Associate Editor
Most people don't know that 4,500 Japanese-American men served in a special, experimental U.S. Army regiment during World War II, far less that a unit of that regiment liberated the Dachau death camp in southern Germany.
But playwright/actor Lane Nishikawa knew all about it, since three of his uncles served in that regiment, including one who helped liberate Dachau. That knowledge, plus many years of observing his father, "how he has maintained friendships over the years with people of different races," inspired Nishikawa to write a play about a lifetime friendship between a Jewish survivor of Dachau and a member of the 552nd Artillery Unit of the 442nd Nisei Regimental Combat Team who liberated him.
Nishikawa didn't write "The Gate of Heaven" alone though. He called his Jewish-actor friend Victor Talmadge, and the two went on to co-write the play and co-star in it at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Now Nishikawa, portraying his character Kiyoshi "Sam" Yamamoto, is bringing his play to the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. Costarring as Leon is John Carpenter, who recently played the role in a production at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego.
(Talmadge is currently starring as the king in a touring production of "The King and I," which will be at ASU's Gammage Auditorium Jan. 6-11.)
While Talmadge interviewed Jewish Holocaust survivors to help him write the Leon Ehrlich character, Nishikawa interviewed members of the Japanese-American regiment that liberated Dachau.
Nishikawa explained that his family was from Hawaii, where about 3,000 of the 4,500 members of the regiment hailed from. The others came from internment camps in the United States, and many of those men left behind relatives in internment camps to fight for the U.S., he said.
The 442nd regiment, presided over by all-Caucasian officers, went on to be successful and highly decorated, Nishikawa noted.
"They really wanted to prove to America that they were Americans, that they were patriotic, that they were willing to fight and die for their country," he said. "They felt that somebody (had) to do something to say to America that (its imprisonment of Japanese Americans) was wrong, something other than just getting angry. ... A lot of people were so angry (about the U.S. internment camps) that they didn't (enlist)."
The play opens in April 1945, at Dachau. It then follows the lives of the two men through 14 separate scenes, spaced roughly five years apart in the lives of the characters.
Although the play is about two men, "we're talking not just about individuals, we're talking about a people," said Nishikawa.
He described one scene from the play, set around 1985, during which Leon is asked to speak to a group of Japanese people and he "realizes he's there because a Japanese American saved him."
"It's now 40 years later, and he's heard that people don't believe the Holocaust happened, and some people don't believe that there were Japanese-American internment camps," explained the playwright. "He (Leon) says, 'My humanity is bound up in your humanity. We are one.' "
And that, said Nishikawa, is the fundamental message of the play - our shared humanity.
"It doesn't just point out the problems of humanity," he added. "It really tries to find an answer."
Nishikawa is now working on a new play commissioned by the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, "Gila River," which focuses on a California Japanese-American family interned in a Gila River desert camp in Arizona.
"The Gate of Heaven" will be performed at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 21-22, and 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 23. Tickets are $22-$26. Call 994-2787 and press 2.
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