Byline: Anna Kaplan
Mar. 22--Philip Kan Gotanda has been different kinds of Americans.
He's been an American growing up in a tight-knit Japanese-American community in Stockton with everyone around him trying to find their role in a country that sent them to internment camps during World War II. He's been an American living in Japan, trying to find his own place in the world. He's been a musician in a world of doctors and a playwright in a world of lawyers. Gotanda's newest play, 'After the War,' is a glimpse into the lives of people who don't quite belong, who vie for the mythical American Dream and fall short by virtue of their race and other circumstances of birth. It opens today at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre. 'After the War' is set in a boarding house in San Francisco's Japantown just after WWII. The house is run by a Japanese man, Chet Monkawa, whose family operated it before the war. He spent the intervening years in internment camps and has returned to a community far different from the one he left.
Gotanda, 56, said he was interested in the 'vacuum' period right after WWII, when Japanese-Americans came back to reclaim their old communities only to find that other groups had taken over the space in their absence. In San Francisco's Japantown, which celebrates its centennial this year, a predominantly black community fueled by wartime-created jobs had sprung up. There was a vibrant jazz scene that flowed over from the neighboring Fillmore district. Both the black and Japanese-American communities were marginalized by the mainstream culture, and the relationship between the two groups is one of 'After the War's' main topics. The thorny, cautious friendship between Chet and Earl Worthing, a black man from the South, is central to the story.
'Part of Chet's thing is that he believes there's a way to be an American in a way that everyone can participate in,' Gotanda said.
'After the War' represents a collaboration between Gotanda and ACT, which commissioned the play as part of its contribution to the Japantown centennial celebration. 'We've been working on this nonstop for three years,' said ACT artistic director Carey Perloff, who's also directing. 'It's a remarkable play. There are so few plays that really cover these issues of American identity.' For Gotanda, the drama is an affirmation that audiences and critics want to hear stories from the fringes of society. He grew on one such fringe in 1950s Stockton.
Gotanda's father came from Japan in the 1930s to become a doctor. He settled here and got married just before the war broke out. Along with other Japanese-Americans in San Joaquin County, Gotanda's parents were sent to Rohwert, Ark., where his father was made camp doctor.
When the Japanese-Americans returned to the county, it was with a marked distrust. 'The idea they came away with was, 'Let's stick together. This is a country that for some reason turned against us,' ' Gotanda said. In Stockton, he said, you stuck with your own kind. Children grew up enmeshed in the community and were encouraged to find jobs that would help them stay there. 'You existed within it,' Gotanda said. 'You went to church and to school in it, you played sports in it. 'That's who I am as an American: I'm an American who grew up in a Japanese-American community. The expectation was to become a professional, but I was always interested in the arts. It was very difficult on my father.' At Stagg High School, Gotanda played in rock bands, often with Tod Ruhstaller, now director of The Haggin Museum.
'Everybody at Stagg was aware that Phil was destined for pretty big things,' Ruhstaller said. 'I like that when I was young I associated with someone who I look up to now. Phil's a genuine Stockton success story.' But at the time, before he wrote important plays and directed independent films, the pressure to conform was strong enough that Gotanda earned a law degree. He never took the bar exam, though. Instead, Gotanda wrote a musical while still in law school and moved to Los Angeles to produce it. One of the plays he did in Los Angeles was 'Song for a Nisei Fisherman,' which was based on his father's life and improved their relationship. 'That's when he finally understood that this was something people did as a thing to do,' Gotanda said. 'It was enough for me that he could accept it.' In the meantime, what got the playwright through the tougher days was his own persistence and need to tell his stories his way. 'It's your own voice,' he said. 'You have to honor it and feed it. 'I can only write so many stories, so they have to be mine,' Gotanda added. 'You can't stop doing what you feel you need to do. The world will tell you to shut up or it won't.'
Contact reporter Anna Kaplan at (209) 546-8294 or akaplan@recordnet.com
Copyright (c) 2007, The Record, Stockton, Calif.
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