Journey Home
Yoshiko Uchida
This suggested script is taken from chapter 10, in which the Sakane family
hears the news that the war is over at last.
SUGGESTED STAGING:
The narrator stands at a lectern. Yuki, Emi, Uncle Oka, and Mrs. Jamieson sit
on chairs.
NARRATOR'S OPENING LINES:
We shall present a scene from Yoshiko Uchida's Journey Home. The characters
are Yuki, a young Japanese-American girl, read by ; her concentration camp friend,
Emi, read by ________ Uncle Oka, who emigrated from Japan long ago as a young
man, read by ________; and Mrs. Jamieson, former neighbor and close family friend,
read by ________. I, ________, am the narrator.
Although the Sakanes were thrilled to hear that they could return
to their home in California after the exclusion order against the Japanese on
the West Coast was lifted, the many changes that met them made life uncomfortable
and difficult. Yuki's mother, a poet, worked cleaning house for a wealthy white
family; and her father, formerly in charge of a large shipping company but now
considered an "enemy alien on parole," had trouble finding a job at all.
At last he was hired as a lowly clerk, and the entire family put up with the
lack of privacy living in a hostel for returning Japanese. As the scene opens,
the family longs for the war to end, so that life can return to normal. Yuki
and Emi are listening to the radio when they hear the news that Japan has surrendered
after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
SCRIPTING SUGGESTIONS:
-
1. Begin with Yoki and Emi shouting together that Japan has surrendered.
-
2. Throughout the script include instructions to tell the readers what voice
or facial expressions to use, such as happily, sadly, angrily.
-
3. Uncle Oka should speak quietly and sadly, in contrast to the girls' excited voices. Combine his speeches about when he was small and the one in which he feels no one wins a war.
-
4. After Uncle Oka says that nobody wins in a war, continue with Mrs. Jamieson's
speech about baking a cake, from what is actually the next scene. In this Way,
her asking what she can say seems to be a response to Uncle Oka's saying that
nobody Wins in war.
-
5. Continue the dialogue as written.
-
6. End the scene with Mrs. Jamieson's pronouncement that it is time a lot of
things were changed and that she is going to write to the president.
NARRATOR'S CLOSING LINES:
The end of the war brings many changes to the Sakanes' lives: a move into an
apartment over their own store, and the return of Yuki's brother Ken, wounded
from fighting for a country that put him behind barbed wire. But Yuki holds
off celebrating until she is "really home", back in her old house, with
everything the same as it was before the war and the concentration camp that
disrupted all their lives. Only when Ken comes to terms with the cause of his
despair does Yuki discover that her journey is complete.
More Information on Readers
Theater
