that's another world that i was intrigued by and the fact that there were neisei jazz musicians. also the no no boys, which i'm not sure if you are aware of, but one of the story lines in the play is about the character called chet monkawa and he was what was known as a no no boy. at some point everyone in the internment camp was asked to do this questionnaire and there

that's another world that i was intrigued by and the fact that there were neisei jazz musicians. also the no no boys, which i'm not sure if you are aware of, but one of the story lines in the play is about the character called chet monkawa and he was what was known as a no no boy. at some point everyone in the internment camp was asked to do this questionnaire and there were two questions, question 27 and 28, which basically said you were foreswear allegiance to japan and the emperor and will swear allegiance to america and that you will serve in the armed forces. and for young neisei men in their late teens and 20's, if you signed that, by and large the sense was you could be drafted. and what came about was a certain amount of controversy over those two questions because a lot of things were floating around. one of the arguments, and that's my character, we're locked up. we're in prison and then i'm asked to sort of go out and sort of, like, defend this country while we're all locked up? on top of that, i'm supposed to, like, divorce myself from allegiance to a foreign emperor

and for young neisei men in their late teens and 20's, if you signed that, by and large the sense was you could be drafted. and what came about was a certain amount of controversy over those two questions because a lot of things were floating around. one of the arguments, and that's my character, we're locked up. we're in prison and then i'm asked to sort of go out and sort of, like, defend this country while we're all locked up? on top of that, i'm supposed to, like, divorce myself from allegiance to a foreign emperor of a country i've never been to and i have to swear i am an american when i thought i was always an american? there was a great deal of controversy in the camps and difference of opinion. so my character is one of those individuals who signed no, no. that's a form of protest. and because of doing that, he is taken out of the camp that he's in and sent to tule lake where most of the troublemakers were sent. then he gets out of camp and he comes back to san francisco and what happened in the japanese american communities is that many of the young men signed yes yes. many

oge, an excentric neisei who likes literature. i thought it would be an interesting thing to do. but after a while we did a reading and we realized as good an actor as gregory is, it was pushing his limits for him to play a japanese american character in the late 40's. >> i imagine him as being much older. >> in the course of writing the play and using various actors, he became younger. this chinese actor is more like a character in his mid to late 30's, excentric, a career bachelor who is into russian literature and who fashions himself kind of patterned after the japanese artists of the 30's and 40's. he has round sort of glasses and a braid. but getting back to the question of creating characters, for example african american characters, i'm also caution -- i had written another play called johann that was about an african american gi and a japanese wife that got married in post war japan. i wrote that play 20 years ago. i wouldn't do it for about 8 years or so because i just didn't feel comfortable about being a japanese american writing an african american character. you hav