JIVE BOMBER
(in development)
Written by Saachiko and Dom Magwili, based on the musical “A Jive Bomber’s Christmas”

SYNOPSIS
 
It’s 1943, at the height of World War II.  Behind barbed wire in a desolate part of Wyoming is Heart Mountain, one of 13 concentration camps where over 120,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated. A hip Nisei (second-generation Japanese-American) zoot suiter, JACKSON OMATA, nicknamed the Jive Bomber, cons, trades and barters everything from toilet paper to pristine records of Frank Sinatra to get by. 

AKI YAMADA,  an Issei (first-generation Japanese-American).  A quiet, modest widower whose wife and child passed on years ago, he spends his time helping people.  If there's a job to do, Aki does it.

An earnest young Nisei woman named KEI ARAGAKI passes her time by lifting the spirits of the people in her block. Or at least she tries to.  Kei starts clubs, organizes dances, and activities, but with little success.   

A newcomer, MITZI KAGAYAMA, a free-spirited singer/hoofer from Hawaii is transferred to camp and becomes Kei’s unexpected roommate, much to their dismay. Their opposite personalities clash.

Overseas, Kei’s older brother, HIDEO, is fighting behind enemy lines in France as his 100th/442nd Regimental Combat unit pushes the Germans back.  He writes to his sister frequently.

Despite the gloomy and desperate situation they live in, they all make the best of it. With Christmas coming, Jackson and Mitzi, along with Aki, convince Kei to hold a holiday show to lift the spirit of all the camp inhabitants.

Preparation for the show, however, is interrupted with news from the outside world.  A violent riot breaks out at another concentration camp, Tule Lake.  An internee is shot trying to escape the barbed wire. In retaliation to the infamous questionnaire that asks the loyalty of those who are incarcerated, Aki decides to join the No-No boys in protest.  Jackson meanwhile proves his loyalty by enlisting into the U.S. Army. They clash.  Hideo is missing in action. Kei collapses from fatigue.

Despite the difficulties, a recovered Kei is determined. “The show must go on!”

The Christmas show is a big success. For one brief moment, it gives the internees a sense of hope for the future.

PRODUCER’S NOTES
 
December 1941: After Pearl Harbor, when the United States plunged into war, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, to evacuate all Americans of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast.

February 1942: Over 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated to 10 “relocation centers” that were spread out in the most remotest parts of the country.  There were suspicions of espionage and sabotage (though it was later proven through the Freedom Information Act that they were all unfounded and fabricated to carry out the order).

June 1943: In order to prove their loyalty, many of the younger Nisei men volunteered into the Army, forming the infamous 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat team.  “Go for Broke” was their motto, and they were sent to the front lines of Europe. They became the most decorated American unit not just during WWII but in military history (they were honored in a private and quiet ceremony, however, as opposed to a ticker tape parade down Times Square that was usually afforded war heroes at the time).   They were also the most decimated, losing over three-quarters of their men.

I preface this because in a trend where Hollywood is running out of bad guys and going back to the past when we “fought the good fight” by making movies about WWII (Saving Private Ryan started it),  and yet nobody mentions what was going on at the home front during that time.  What about all those American citizens who were punished just for looking like the enemy?

A Jive Bomber’s Christmas shows that dark chapter in American history where the Constitution failed. There have been many documentaries on TV and even Hollywood films – Come See the Paradise and the recent Snow Falling on Cedars – that depicted the Japanese American internment, but they failed to gain an audience because of one oversight: the viewpoint of the internee.

Co-written by a former internee, this film is a perspective on the inside. How uprooted families dealt with day-to-day living in adverse conditions, while their sons fought a war against Germans and racism to prove to a suspicious government that they were as American as anyone else.

Feature films reach more people than documentary films or television shows.  With more multiplex theaters being built across the country, and with easy access to the Internet and the development to its technologies, films can be shown all over the world at the same time.  It is time to educate people on this subject, to constantly remind people our mistakes of the past so that it will not repeat in the future.  And do it in an entertaining way without hammering it home like a history lecture.

There’s a sense of urgency in making Jive Bomber in light of all the Hollywood WWII movies being made now. But I don’t have a multi-million dollar budget like The Thin Red Line or U-571 or Pearl Harbor. Films like Jive Bomber’s need to be made not to make money, but to make a difference. I am not saying our one film will do the trick, but it’s a start.

PRODUCTION

DOM MAGWILI (Writer/Co-Director)
Coming from a strong theatrical background, this Pilipino American writer/actor/director has trained at the famed American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco. As a writer, he was awarded two Rockefeller-Playwright-in-Residence grants, as well as Dramalogue’s Award for Outstanding Musical Play for Christmas in Camp.   Three of his screenplays have been produced.

Dom was the Artistic Director at the Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco as well as the Director of the Asian American Theater Project of the Los Angeles Theater Center (LATC).   He co-directed and taught acting for the East West Players Conservatory, the premier Asian American theater group in the country.

Dom the actor has been in such TV shows as The X-Files,  Seinfeld, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, King of Queens, Arli$$,  Becker, Chicago Hope, J.A.G., The Young and the Restless and films including Drive, Dear God and Fifty/Fifty.

For the second year in a row,  he will play his critically-acclaimed title role in the revival of The King and I, in a local tour. Currently armed with a National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) grant, he and actress/producer Saachiko are developing another musical, The Cathayan Pirate, based on the true exploits of Madame Ching, the infamous female Chinese pirate that terrorized the Pacific. 


SAACHIKO (Writer/Executive Producer)
This multi-talented Japanese-American actress has appeared in such distinguished films as SAFE with Julianne Moore, My Family / Mi Familia with Jimmy Smits and Beverly Hill Ninja with the late Chris Farley, as well as such TV shows as Becker, The Young and the Restless, General Hospital, In Living Color, L.A. Law, and M.A.S.H.

Alongside Dom, she headed the conservatory at East West Players, the oldest Asian American theater company in the U.S., receiving numerous grants, including the Ford Foundation and the NEA Musical Theater Grant. She has produced and directed several stage plays, including Jive Bomber and Vera Cruz, the biography of the Pilipino farmworker who was Cesar Chavez’s right-hand man during the United Farm Workers movement in the ‘70s.  Saachiko and Dom were among the four playwrights picked in the 1999 ASCAP Musical Workshop program in New York for their work-in-progress, The Maiden Ghost.

Saachiko was interned at Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming during World War II.