Your country has forcibly removed your family from your homes, jobs and businesses on the West Coast to a barren prison camp in Idaho. Then it drafts you into the military to fight for the country that put your family behind barbed wire.
What would you do?
That’s the question at the heart of The Nisei Paradox, a play that explores the World War II cases of 44 resisters at the Minidoka Relocation Camp in Jerome County. And how that story is told is the subject of the newest Idaho Experience documentary, The Nisei Paradox: Justice on Trial. The film airs Thursday, Sept. 5, at 8:30 PM and Sunday, Sept. 8, at 7:30 PM on Idaho Public Television, and will be available for streaming at video.idahoptv.org.
The play, written and performed by a team of mostly Idaho lawyers, is being presented around Idaho in September by the Friends of Minidoka in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the 1944 cases.
“It’s a moment in time where our country and then our judicial system fell short of what we aspired to be, and not in a small way,” says Ron Bush, who conceived of the play in 2017 when he was an Idaho federal magistrate judge. “I wanted to … to remind those of us in the justice system that we have a duty ... by virtue of our profession and our roles to be especially vigilant against such things happening.”
Idaho Public Television also presents the full multimedia performance of The Nisei Paradox play at video.idahoptv.org. You can find out about the Friends of Minidoka’s September events and performances at minidoka.org.
Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation, Anne Voillequé and Louise Nelson, Judy and Steve Meyer, the Friends of Idaho Public Television, the Idaho Public Television Endowment, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
