Hiroshi Kashiwagi

Hiroshi Kashiwagi (November 8, 1922 – October 29, 2019) was a Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) poet, playwright and actor. For his writing and performance work on stage he is considered an early pioneer of Asian American theatre. Biography Kashiwagi was born in 1922 in Sacramento, California. He grew up in Loomis, a small fruit-growing town in Placer County, California, where his Issei parents ran a fish market. He attended Loomis Elementary school, Placer High School and Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, graduating in 1940. He also attended Japanese language school, where he did his first writing and performing. During World War II, following the signing of Executive Order 9066, Kashiwagi and his family were sent to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, an internment camp for Japanese Americans. In camp, Kashiwagi spent time reading, and joined a theatre group. When the U.S. government forced detainees to fill out a Leave Clearance Application Form, commonly known as the "loyalty questionnaire", Kashiwagi refused to answer the infamous questions 27 & 28, key questions which asked internees, after a year of unjustified incarceration, if they were willing to swear unqualified allegiance to, and serve in the military for, the same government that had forced them into the camps in violation of the constitutional rights, and, if they were willing to forswear allegiance to Japan, thereby admitting an allegiance to the enemy. Unable to answer "yes-yes," to the two questions, the government took Kashiwagi's refusal to reply as a "no-no," and he was branded a No-No Boy, and he and his family were segregated by the government as "disloyals" and were ostracized by the Japanese American community. After the passage of the Renunciation Act of 1944, Kashiwagi and others at Tule Lake renounced their U.S. citizenship under government coercion.