In 1942, during World War II, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry — two-thirds of whom were American citizens — were wrongfully incarcerated in concentration camps within the United States. Inspired by these events, a new English-language opera, The Camp, with music by Daniel Kessner and libretto by Lionelle Hamanaka, will have its world premiere in Los Angeles with four performances at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center’s Aratani Theatre Feb. 22 – March 2.
The opera is presented in partnership with JACCC, which is located within blocks of the spot where families were loaded onto buses and transported to the camps. The work tells the story of a family, the Shimonos, who are reunited inside a camp. They endure the emotional and physical toll of their imprisonment by dint of their strength and the power of collective resistance.
Conductor Steven F. Hofer leads a 22-piece orchestra that includes a shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and a koto (13-string zither). The intergenerational cast of 11 singers is led by bass-baritone Roberto Perlas Gómez as Mas Shimono and soprano Tiffany Ho as Suzy Shimono. Director Diana Wyenn is being assisted by associate director John Miyasaki, whose family was incarcerated at Manzanar War Relocation Center Inyo County.
Wyenn explained that Kessner, who wrote his first opera some 50 years ago, grew up on the edge of L.A.’s Little Tokyo neighborhood and made the “Manzanar pilgrimage” in 2011. “He had spoken to several survivors and felt like opera was a wonderful medium to help tell this important and dark chapter of American history.
“He knew he couldn’t do this alone,” continued Wyenn, “and found a few playwrights who’d written about this, and one was Lionelle. After her parents were incarcerated, the family moved to New York [where] her father, Conrad Yama, had a career as an actor. [So] she grew up in an artistic household.”
Miyasaki noted that while “every family’s story is somewhat unique, there are so many parallels [to my own family’s experience]. The show is very triggering for me. Lionelle didn’t want to name the camp, and I think that’s on purpose. But it keeps feeling like it’s Manzanar. Everything [having to do] with the camp — the packing, the loss, how anything Japanese was destroyed — feels reminiscent of what [that] does to a family.
“My family still kind of deals with the experience,” he added, “the way it fractured brothers and sisters, making it hard to know exactly what’s up and what’s down. Even though that’s not illustrated so much in [this particular work], I always think about what could have been and rebuilding and what happens now. Those are things that echo for me.”
“It’s contemporary opera, and it feels very present. It’s [an] opera of now,” said Wyenn. “It has these influences of Japanese music, which Dan studied during different periods of his life. People who love musicals would enjoy this. It’s very emotional.”
Miyasaki calls The Camp “an American story,” one that unfortunately resonates in today’s political climate, where anti-immigrant sentiment is common and people are being deported by the thousands. And it’s no coincidence that the opera will premiere several days after the Feb. 19 Day of Remembrance, an annual observation that marks Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1942 signing of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment camps.
“This is an important moment in history,” said Wyenn, “where we can see ramifications of an executive order and how political and government actions played out on people and their personal lives. As we see a lot of executive orders happening today, it’s a good reminder.”
Miyasaki considers The Camp “a wonderful opportunity — not just for the show but for us as a cast. [Through] this project, we’ve been able to educate and listen to each other.”
Wyenn also believes that there is “real power in community and collective action. Even under the hardest and most dire circumstances, we can still find moments of connection, of joy, and of love. Those are the moments that give us the strength to carry on.”
