Spotlight on . . . Bill Peterson!

         I am a faculty member in the psychology department at Smith College.  I played the part of Katsumi in the first staged reading of Shikataganai on our campus.  In this spotlight I’ll keep my professorial prose in check, but I must begin with a scholarly reference.  Sometime in the 1920s the psychoanalyst Carl Jung described what he called synchronicity.  Synchronicity occurs when someone experiences at least two events that are psychologically linked for the individual but causally unrelated.   For example, you might be thinking of your best friend when she suddenly calls you on your cell phone.  Kendra’s offer for me to play the part of Katsumi completed a short cycle of synchronic events for me that I would like to describe.

        Event #1:  I read comic books, and a little over a year ago DC Comics published a 6-issue mini-series titled Sgt. Rock:  The Lost Battalion.  This comic should be enjoyable for most comic book fans, especially those who have fond memories of 1970s DC war comics.  In the mini-series, Sgt. Rock (“Make war no more”) is trapped behind enemy lines in the Vosges Mountains.  The comic depicts the rescue of Sgt. Rock and the men of Easy Company by the Japanese American 442^nd infantry regiment.  Billy Tucci, the writer/artist of the comic, did an historically accurate job of showcasing the experiences of several Japanese American soldiers.  The individual issues of the comic have been bound together and published as:  Sgt. Rock:  The Lost Battalion HC.  Among other places, it’s available at your finer graphic novel stores.  One of the reasons I enjoyed reading the comic was because it portrayed racism under war time conditions in a way sympathetic to the Japanese American soldiers.

National Japanese American Memorial
in Washington DC (Photo by Bill Peterson).

        Event #2:  At some point while reading the comic I went on-line to find out more information about the Fighting 442^nd.  While on-line I discovered that there exists a National Japanese American Memorial in Washington DC.  It just so happened, in a moment of synchronicity, that my spouse and I had just made plans to spend a week in DC with our 3 boys.  I decided to take my oldest two on a pilgrimage to view the memorial.  My boys are 25% Japanese on their grandmother’s side (my mother), and I wanted them to understand the experiences of other Japanese Americans in the U.S.  So, while on vacation, after a long day at the National Gallery, my wife took my youngest back to the hotel room and I set out with Duncan and Nick to see the internment memorial.  It was not hard to find; the memorial is about 2 blocks north of the Capitol Building.  It’s a bit off the beaten path from the National Mall, but not a disrespectful distance.  The centerpiece of the Memorial is a statue of a crane trapped in barbed wire.  The statue is surrounded by 10 walls made of heavy stone inscribed with the 10 interment locations and the number of internees who lived in each camp.  Other walls contained the names of Japanese Americans killed during World War II.  Yet other walls provided words of wisdom from prominent Japanese American citizens (e.g., a quotation by Senator Inouye from Hawaii).  There are other features of the memorial such as a reflecting pool, but I will let you visit the site to discover its virtues on your own.  It is a moving memorial; in fact, last semester my oldest son was inspired enough to write a 7^th grade English essay on the internment.  

Photo by Bill Peterson.

        Event #3:  The third event of synchronicity, of course, was Kendra’s post that she needed actors to read her new play, Shikataganai.  The call arrived 2 months after my trip to DC.  The setting of Shikataganai is an internment camp.  In the climax of the play, two of the characters must decide whether to enlist in the army to fight for the country that has imprisoned them.  Do these two young characters in the play answer “yes-yes” or “no-no” to Items 27 and 28 on the loyalty questionnaire?  You’ll have to watch the play to find out.  Regardless of their answers, the lives of Nisei men who said “yes-yes” to the actual survey and enrolled in the U.S. army during World War II are fictionalized in Sgt. Rock:  The Lost Battalion and memorialized in stone next to our U.S. Capitol Building. 

        I wish the cast of Shikataganai the best of fortune as they prepare to present the play in Hawaii.  Perhaps Shikataganai will spark further experiences of unexpected synchronicity in the audience.