Ryun Yu as Gordon Hirabayashi
When actors decide to try their hand at writing, it’s almost always to create a juicy part for themselves to perform. However, when veteran Japanese American actress Jeanne Sakata decided to pursue her literary muse, she took a different route — writing a one-man show with no role for her.
Now, a decade later, the fruits of her labor—Dawn’s Light: The Journey of Gordon Hirabayashi — will have its world premiere at Los Angeles’ East West Players, the nation’s oldest and most recognizable Asian Pacific American theater.This is the story of Gordon Hirabayashi, who became one of the key figures in American civil rights history when he challenged the constitutionality of the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1942, the 24-year-old Hirabayashi took his fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Hirabayashi v. United States case, where the court ruled unanimously against him. Hirabayashi spent the rest of the war in prison, and it wasn’t until 1987 that his conviction was overturned with the support of a new generation of activists, including attorney Dale Minami.
“Gordon’s legacy is in the affirmation of the right to dissent and challenge arbitrary government actions, no matter how popular they may be at the time,” Minami said about Hirabayashi’s key role in history. “He epitomizes a noble tradition of those who are willing to go to prison for their beliefs.”
A few years after Hirabayashi’s conviction was overturned, a series of events led Sakata to his story. She read about him in Peter Iron’s book, The Courage of Their Convictions, around the same time she saw him interviewed for a PBS special. She also read a poem by David Mura mentioning Hirabayashi.
“I remember [Mura] writing about how Gordon reminded him of his own father, except his father never spoke this way,” Sakata said. “I felt the same way. Gordon was like my father or uncle, but his mind was uniquely his. And for him to take the stand he took at that young age, it was fascinating.”
Shortly after all of this, Sakata went to Seattle to do a play and learned that the letters Hirabayashi had written as a young man were housed in the University of Washington’s archives. “I’d pop over after rehearsals to study the letters,” she said. “They were so intriguing. His personality just leapt off the page.”
Sakata contacted Hirabayashi, and they met for two sets of interviews in the Bay Area and later in Canada where he still resides.
Then Sakata started to write, but struggled to find the right format for the story. Finally, in 2003, Chay Yew, who was running the Asian Theater Workshop at the Mark Taper Forum, offered her a commission to finish the piece and encouraged her to pursue the piece as a one-man solo show.
“Chay told me that this was the story of a man’s inward spiritual enlightenment, while he’s also challenging a racist society,” Sakata said. “He thought it would be interesting to see one person go through that sort of journey.”
While developing her work through the Taper, she met actor Ryun Yu, who read for her. She immediately knew he was the right man for the job.
For his part, Yu knows how important it is for him to do justice to Hirabayashi and his legacy.
“He took on not only the American government, but also risked the scorn of other Japanese Americans — all for the love of an idea of what America could be,” Yu said. “It has even more resonance being performed at the East West theater — they told us that when they were converting the space into a theater, they found suitcases and other things left behind or left unclaimed by people who had gone to camp.”
Dawn’s Light: The Journey of Gordon Hirabayashi will be performed at the David Henry Hwang Theater at the Union Center for the Arts on 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. November 7–December 2, 2007. General ticket prices are $35 for orchestra and $30 for balcony. Preview tickets are $20 for all seats. Opening night tickets are $60 for all seats. For ticket purchases, subscription requests or more information, please call East West Players at (213) 625-7000 or visit www.eastwestplayers.org. Philip W. Chung is a writer and co-artistic director of Lodestone Theatre Ensemble.