BERKELEY — Nikiko Masumoto will perform her one-woman show, “What We Could Carry,” on Sunday, Feb. 24, at 10:30 a.m. at Berkeley Methodist United Church, 1710 Carleton St.
The performance, which is free and open to all, will be part of BMUC’s Day of Remembrance worship service.
The show asks the audience to consider what memory they carry about Japanese American experiences before, during, and after internment and World War II. Based almost entirely on the testimony of individuals from the Los Angeles hearings of the 1981 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Masumoto re-creates 13 individuals’ testimony (in addition to her own) about the weight of these memories.
This piece was developed during Masumoto’s graduate school work at the University of Texas at Austin. The Japanese American National Museum’s William Hohri Collection) was a home for her to conduct her research. She performed an excerpt from “What We Could Carry” at JANM’s gala last year.
For more information on the show, click here.
Every year, BMUC commemorates the Day of Remembrance with an exhibit. Members are being asked to bring artifacts and memorabilia from the immediate pre-war years and the years of confinement in the U.S. concentration camps.
For more information on the church, click here.
Day of Remembrance 2013: The years since we departed the concentration camps has passed quickly and only dim memories are stirred of the Issei. To some it seems like yesterday and to others yet it seems eons ago that we were in such a craven environment.
A person cannot live entirely in the present; the past, the sadness of the Issei parents toiling so hard for so little, and then, of the unjust internment years, is with me always and everywhere each Day of Remembrance.
Thank you for sharing & helping get the word out! I love this piece, it rocks me every time I get a chance to lift up these voices. Very grateful!