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

Sister’s Trauma from being Incarcerated during World War II

I – I was as a child, much more accepting of everything. I have a sister, Akiko, who went off to become a cadet nurse, and she – she blocked out camp altogether. When I began to get more curious about some things, and I asked her about the camp, she said, “I wasn’t in camp.” And it – you know, I didn’t push her and say, “Yes you were in camp, I was there with you,” I just kind of let it go because I think it was the training of not talking back to your older sisters. So I just kind of said, “Well I remember when you went to cadet nursing school,” which means she had to go from somewhere, she didn’t go from – you know, to let her know I knew that she was in camp. But it’s not like I argued with her.

imprisonment incarceration sisters World War II 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)