We Hold These Truths

From the BCT BIPOC Festival

Or: All American Hero

Jeanne Sakata’s biography of Gordon Hirabayashi (Ryun Yu) is a rich portrait of a man and his principals. Her subject, a quaker and American citizen who stood up for the thousands unjustly confined in American concentration camps during the war, unfolds the whole of his life, triumphs and defeats, historic stances and quiet images, in a vein of pure storytelling.

Yu, as her selected storyteller, carries both gravitas and buoyancy. One moment he is Gordon as the venerable professor then as a lovestruck youth tripping over his own feet, then a jovial prisoner, then a man utterly betrayed by his country, his capacity for words driven from him with a knife thrust. A highlight is his scamper throughout the audience describing Gordon’s journey through the west as he hitchhiked to his own incarceration. He also provides a multitude of other characters, most notably Gordon’s mother Mitsuko, a performance of both humor and force.

It is also gorgeously set, three chairs on the edge of a circle of light, and a symphony of sounds to lift up Yu’s story, and add substance to the world. Subtle but beautifully crafted sounds range, like the feathered flap of letters soaring away from their sender, or the terrible sweetness of a pamphlet reintegrating displaced Nisei and Issei from the camps and whitewashing their experiences for them.

Sakata’s script dives and swoops through many moods, but always alighting on the tragedy of the Internment. She opens and closes with an introduction of Quaker mysticism, and renders more beautiful metaphors throughout as delicate constructions. There are moments of finely black comedy as Gordon interacts with numerous white authorities who cannot comprehend this gentle man and his quest for justice. There are the moments of grief to be taken through as the war claims more lives and liberties. And we get the hard, unvarnished truths that the United States Government actively worked to disenfranchise Japanese Americans, using the war as an excuse, and used base tactics to shame and discredit Gordon and his fellows. (The failure of the Supreme Court to stand up for the rights of citizens hits harder today then it might have three months ago).

The script (and Yu’s performance) have been tried and tested and taken down to a tee. I am so grateful that they came to Boise to share it, and very grateful that I was there to witness it.