(commotion and crashing noises)
[SHIRO FLOYD MORI] Executive Order 9066,
the origin of that kind of reminds me of some of
the things that are happening today.
We panic.
We have hysteria, when an incident happens,
particularly if it's with a minority group of people.
We'd hoped we learned from that experience,
but I think today we still have to be cautious.
We have to hold our government accountable.
(film projector whirls)
(typewriter clicking)
(sound of explosions)
[NARRATOR] On December 7, 1941,
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor,
causing the United States to declare war
on Japan.
The war heightened prevailing racist attitudes
and anti-Japanese sentiment grew.
Many suspected that their Japanese
American neighbors might be spies or saboteurs.
The military pressed President Roosevelt to take action
and circumvent constitutional safeguards
in the name of national defense.
On February 19th, 1942,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066,
which allowed the government to forcibly remove
and imprison persons of Japanese descent,
due to racial prejudice and war hysteria.
[GEORGE TAKEI] Executive Order 9066
signed by President Roosevelt makes me sad for him
because he was the victim of that hysteria.
He reacted with fear
and suspicion with no basis and fact.
[NARRATOR] Though the United States was
at war with countries in both Europe and Asia,
only states along the West Coast - Washington,
Oregon and California, where large populations
of Japanese Americans lived
- were designated military areas.
This paved the way for the forced removal
and incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans,
entire families, including women and children,
to America's concentration camps.
Two thirds of those incarcerated
were American citizens.
They lost their land, their homes,
their businesses, their dignity.
Everything.
♪ somber music ♪
(sound of train on tracks)
Dalton Wells, just north of Moab, Utah, was an abandoned
Civilian Conservation Corps camp from the 1930s
that was retrofitted to house Japanese American internees
who protested their imprisonment or asked
embarrassing questions about their government.
49 men, American citizens,
were essentially locked up in solitary confinement.
[KENJI BUNCH] Dalton Wells, I had no idea it existed.
Some stuff
obviously went down there and it's a weird sensation
to be standing on land that I had experienced
something unjust
and traumatic and, frankly, un-American.
I just kind of felt compelled
to take my instrument out and play Minidoka,
the piece that I wrote after visiting Minidoka in Idaho.
That was kind of why I wrote the piece,
I wanted to offer some kind of healing energy...
for the people who experienced that
situation, but also in a sense,
for the land itself to heal that spot.
[NARRATOR] George Takei
collaborated with Kenji on the work.
George was only a child when he was taken away.
[GEORGE TAKEI] We lived in a two bedroom house
on Garnet Street in Los Angeles.
Early one morning, it was
May, Daddy came into our bedroom
and quickly woke us up
and dressed my brother and me hurriedly,
and he told us to wait in the living room
while our parents
did some last minute packing in their bedroom.
Our baby sister was in the cradle with them.
So my brother and I were just gazing out the front window
out on the neighborhood, when suddenly we saw
soldiers marching up our driveway.
They carried rifles
with bayonets on them.
They stomped up the front porch
and with their fists began banging on the door.
We were terrified.
The whole house seemed to be trembling.
Daddy answered the door, and literally at gunpoint,
we were ordered out of our home.
We were spit on
and assaulted on the street.
Our homes, our businesses,
our cars were graffitied.
The government came down with a curfew.
Our bank accounts were frozen.
Our life savings were taken.
And then the terror intensified.
♪♪
[NARRATOR] Although Kenji Bunch wasn't born in 1942,
the whole time he was growing up in Portland, Oregon,
he heard stories from Japanese American friends
about the camps.
Had he been born 40 years earlier,
he himself would have been forced to relocate to a camp.
He studied music at the prestigious Juilliard School,
where he was the first student
ever to receive dual bachelor and master of music degrees
in viola and composition.
[GEORGE TAKEI] Kenji Bunch,
the composer, is an enormously gifted man.
What I love about his music is he's
dealing with Asian Americans, Japanese Americans.
The sound is very American
because this is an American story.
And here I am, a Japanese American
telling that story with that music.
He's a wonderful composer of moving music.
But beyond that, it's a very American sound,
and I am thrilled to be a part of that.
Despite the distant events, many Japanese Americans
and other Asian Americans fear history
is repeating itself today.
From March 2020
and continuing through 2022,
incidences of anti-Asian hate, including violent verbal
and physical assaults, even murder, on people
of Asian descent rose 339% in America.
Escalated by
outrage fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Labeled by some as the Wuhan flu,
kung flu or China virus.
Many in the Asian American community
feel they are experiencing the same kind of rage
Japanese Americans felt back in 1942.
[GEORGE TAKEI] My father always emphasized to us
how our democracy is very vulnerable,
because it's a people's democracy and it's the people
who give it its meaning, strength and substance.
[NARRATOR] It is a truth that art gives us meaning
and helps us better understand our world.
Kenji Bunch and his music are a part of that process.
♪♪
[GEORGE TAKEI] Good evening.
I'm George Takei.
Music is in our bodies,
in our environment, the sounds of nature.
And to tell this singular story,
using the talent of an enormously
gifted Japanese American composer,
and my personal family experience,
I think is going to be
an important contribution to American society
and to moving it forward to a better American society.
[KENJI BUNCH] We have to believe that
a project like this, even though
it's just one concert, one night
in one part of the country with one audience,
I have to believe that that that can make a difference.
♪♪
To coin a phrase,
a super spreader of compassion and an understanding
and awareness of history and
learning from mistakes of history.
[GEORGE TAKEI] With the bombing of Hiroshima
and then Nagasaki, the war with Japan ended.
America had won.
But now our family,
together with 120,000 people,
face the new challenge of rebuilding our lives
in a nation still hostile to us.
The government gave each one of us
a one way ticket to anywhere in the United States
and $25 to build our new life.
We were to forge for ourselves
in a country where they still considered us
the enemy.
Throughout the existence of the United States,
we've had the tendency to make sweeping
generalization without basis and fact, on people
that look or sound or are colored differently.
The creator of the show that serves as my platform,
Star Trek, the creator's name was Gene Roddenberry.
He coined the phrase
infinite diversity in infinite combinations.
That's what makes American society
today, and hopefully the future society
that can embrace diversity as a source of strength.
And so diversity,
and acceptance of that diversity as a string,
is going to make the society a better,
more equal, and more vibrant, and stronger society.
[NARRATOR] The blame game has reappeared
based on fear, prejudice and misguided beliefs.
What will it take to move forward
and stop making the mistakes of the past.
♪ drum beat music ♪