Arts &Culture Former Tule Lake camp internee Jim Tamimoto talks to Chicoan Diane Suzuki.
THIS WEEK
Not safe at home
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Excellent exhibit on U.S. incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII
A CHORUS LINE: A musical following a day in the life of 17 dancers vying for a spot in the chorus line of a Broadway musical. Thu, 2/8, 7:30pm. $16-$22. Chico Theater Company, 166 Eaton Road. chicotheatercompany.com
LIVING ON LOVE: This comedy by Joe DiPietro and directed
Dclassmate the San Fernando Valley when a threw a ball at her. Hard.
iane Suzuki was in third grade in
“That’s what you get for bombing Pearl Harbor!” he yelled. story and Suzuki didn’t know photo by what he was talking Robert Speer about. It was the 1950s, and Pearl Harbor was rober tspe er@ newsrev iew.c om fading from memory. “I thought he was talking about some kind of Review: flower,” she said during Imprisoned at Home shows through a recent interview. “It aug. 2. sounded pretty.” a series of five In time, she learned lectures and films in about Pearl Harbor conjunction with the exhibit are scheduled and how war hystefor february and ria caused 120,000 March. Visit website people of Japanese for info. descent—80,000 of them American Valene L. Smith Museum of citizens—to be deemed Anthropology potential “enemy aliens” Chico State and, in 1942, forced to 898-5397 surrender their property www.csuchico.edu/ anthmuseum/ and leave their homes to live in one of 10 isolated internment camps behind barbed-wire fences overseen by guards in towers with machine guns. The government called it relocation, but it was really mass incarceration based on race. This shameful violation of Americans’ civil rights is the subject of a compelling and timely new exhibit, titled Imprisoned at Home, at the Valene
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L. Smith Anthropology Museum on the Chico State campus. Put together by students in professor William Nitzky’s anthropology exhibition-installation class, it is a stunning collection of photos, videos, government documents, letters, clothing, artwork, posters, even a life-size reproduction of one of the uninsulated cabins the internees lived in. It’s one of the best exhibits of its kind I’ve seen in Chico. As Adrienne Scott, the museum’s curator, expressed it, “We wanted to knock people’s socks off.” They’ve succeeded. For Suzuki, a longtime Chico resident and Peace and Justice Center activist, it was a milestone in her personal journey to understanding the history of her Japanese ancestors. Most of all, she hoped the exhibit would answer a question she’d been asking for years: Why didn’t they resist? She was especially looking forward to meeting Jim Tamimoto, a Gridleyarea farmer and former internee at the Tule Lake Relocation Center who, at the age of 94, is as trim as a fit 70-yearold. He was one of dozens of JapaneseAmericans who attended the exhibit’s opening reception on Tuesday, Jan. 30 (which coincided with Fred Korematsu Day, a day of recognition in California to honor civil liberties in the name of a man who went to jail rather than submit to relocation and whose dogged legal pursuit of justice ultimately prevailed). For the past seven years, Tamimoto
has been giving lectures, titled Tales from Tule Lake, based on his experiences there. He also is featured in an excellent video documentary by Jesse Dizard titled Mr. Tamimoto’s Journey that is included in this exhibit. When war broke out, Tamimoto tried to enlist in the Army but was denied because he supposedly was an “enemy alien,” to which he angrily responded, “I’m not an ‘enemy alien.’ I was born in this country.” Like many internees, however, he refused to sign a pair of loyalty oaths, insisting that the government had no right to question his loyalty. For that he was sent to a special “segregation center” in the vicinity of the massive (19,000 residents) Tule Lake camp just south of the Oregon-California border. There were 36 men in Tamimoto’s block who had refused to sign the loyalty oaths; he is the only one still alive. For Suzuki, he is living testimony that some internees resisted. When Suzuki was growing up, nobody in her family talked about the camps, she said. As Tamimoto told Suzuki when they met at the exhibit reception, “It took me 50 years to talk about this.” In a corner of the exhibit are a couple of panels depicting current exclusionary practices such as the rescission of DACA and President Trump’s Muslim ban. The message seems to be: Don’t let what happened in 1942 happen again. □
by Jerry Miller follows a demanding diva who discovers that her husband, a maestro, has become enamored with another. Thu, 2/8, 7:30pm. $16. Theatre on the Ridge, 3735 Neal Road, Paradise. 530-877-5760. totr.org
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Special Events GOLDEN GRILL: Lunch followed by bingo by the Cal Park lake. Fri, 2/9, 11:30am. $4. Lakeside Pavilion, 2565 California Park Drive. chicorec.com
Theater A CHORUS LINE: See Thursday. Fri, 2/9, 7:30pm. $16-$22. Chico Theater Company, 166 Eaton Road. chicotheatercompany.com
LIVING ON LOVE: See Thursday. Fri, 2/9, 7:30pm. $16. Theatre on the Ridge, 3735 Neal Road, Paradise. 530-877-5760. totr.org
SLeePING beauTy Friday, Feb. 9 Laxson Auditorium
See frIDay, THEATER