Interviews

1. Keeping Japanese Performance Arts Alive in the Camps

2. Passing Time in the Camps with Baton Twirling

3. Takayo Fischer’s Love of Acting Started with Shibai

4. Facing Prejudice as a Japanese American Teenager in Chicago after the War

5. Takayo Fischer on Her First Time Expressing Outward Affection to Her Parents

6. Being Confused about Racial Identity in Postwar United States

7. Shock of Her Granddaughter Not Knowing Her Japanese Heritage

8. On the Difference between Being a Role and Playing a Role

9. Working on the Set of Pirates of the Caribbean and Meeting Keith Richards

10. The Emotional Toll of Being Incarcerated in Camp during World War II

11. Representing her Family and the Japanese American Community in Acting

12. Sister’s Trauma from being Incarcerated during World War II

13. Her Approach to Preparing for Roles

14. Getting the Role of Gwennie in The World of Suzie Wong

(b. 1932) Nisei American stage, film, and TV actress

Passing Time in the Camps with Baton Twirling

I was also – I knew how to twirl a baton in camp. So I brought my – you know, you could only take what you could carry. I carried my baton, and I twirled in camp, and I ordered boots from the catalogue. I think it was either Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogue, and I don’t remember which one I got it from, but I had major boots, and I had a little outfit, and I just had a little book also, and I would watch, you know, when I would see other people, a parade or something. And I basically taught myself how to twirl. It was pleasurable and it was – because it was something you had to do by yourself, you know? Hour after hour, so that was a nice thing to have.

baton twirling drum majorettes World War II camps

Date: November 8, 2018

Location: California, US

Interviewer: June Berk

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Takayo Fischer, born in November 1932, is a Nisei American stage, film, and TV actress. During World War II, as a young child, she and her family were forcibly evacuated from the West Coast and spent time in the Fresno Assembly Center before being relocated to Jerome and Rohwer concentration camps. Fischer later lived in Chicago, Illinois, where, as a young adult, she won the crown of “Miss Nisei Queen.” She has appeared in dozens of major Hollywood films, including Moneyball (2011), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). She also appeared in the stage production of The World of Suzie Wong in New York in 1958 and many productions with East West Players in Los Angeles. (June 2018)