May 31, 2025, in Portland’s iconic Japanese Garden. It was early summer at its best — still daylight at 7 p.m. and the air crisp enough for a sweater, which was made redundant by vertical tube-like heaters enclosing leaping flames. Chairs had been set up in the Garden’s Mount Hood Overlook, where people could admire the view amid a background of birdsong and conversation. The atmosphere was festive but serious, as most of us knew at least the outlines of the story behind the theme of that night’s concert.

Lost Freedom

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from their homes on the American West Coast. They were transported without due process, first to temporary holding areas and later to one of ten makeshift prison camps in some of the most desolate areas of the West and Midwest. Some were Japanese immigrants. Most were American citizens, having been born in the U.S. The effects of this unwarranted incarceration were devastating, particularly to the older generations, but the courage, ingenuity, and stamina of these people continue to be celebrated today.

This evening’s program, Lost Freedom: A Memory with George Takei, evolved into a collaboration among Chamber Music Northwest, the Portland Japanese Garden, and the Japan Institute. This concert was the first part of a weekend festival commemorating the legacies of Portland’s Japanese and Vanport communities through art, music, theater, and dance; the second concert, titled We Are Still Here, took place the next day at Portland’s Expo Center and featured the choral group Resonance Ensemble.

Because this event was to take place in the Japanese Garden, there would be only 150 seats available, so CMNW held a free “open rehearsal” the day before at Reed College’s Kaul Auditorium. Attended by at least 100 people, the open rehearsal featured the Lost Freedom portion of the concert, in which composer Kenji Bunch not only joined the other members of the sextet scored for this piece, but also talked about the composition and responded to questions. For the open rehearsal, the script was read by Resonance Ensemble’s Associate Conductor Shohei Kobayashi.

Minidoka

The first piece on the program was a viola solo by composer and master violist Kenji Bunch, well-known to Portland audiences. He composed Minidoka in 2016 in honor of the Japanese Americans incarcerated at this lonely site in Idaho. Having visited the site, Bunch learned that prisoners used to gather next to the barbed wire fence, on the other side of which was a little stream. The flowing water brought them comfort. He describes his composition as “a meditation on that stream, the fence, and those people.”

Bunch’s viola solo used a variety of extended techniques to convey the prisoners’ feelings of desolation. It opened with the sound of the bow tapping the strings, followed by simultaneous bowing and plucking, then the bow striking the viola, then bowing near the bridge, producing a harsh, raspy sound, possibly signifying the brutal fence or the prisoners’ anguish. At one point we could hear Bunch’s singing voice against repeated arpeggios, which could have been the sound of a mother crooning to a baby, or perhaps just the soothing sound of the stream.

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Andy Akiho

The following three works on the program were composed by Andy Akiho, another Portland superstar, known for his fluency in all percussion instruments, with a special love for the steel pan. He is also known for his compositions involving traditional instruments of all kinds. 

In 2008 Akiho composed Aluminous for string quartet and percussion and dedicated it to the JACK Quartet and Colin Currie, advocates of contemporary classical music. For this piece, Searmi Park and Jessica Lee, violins; Bunch, viola; and Marilyn de Oliveira, cello were joined by Sergio Carreno, vibraphone. Aluminous is characterized by pizzicato passages in the strings and bright, airy melodies from the vibraphone, at times in syncopated rhythms. A repeated melody is interwoven, often delicately, between strings and percussion, resulting in a lively interplay, coming to a sudden stop at the end. The title seems to be a play on two words: the vibraphone’s aluminum keys and also the luminous nature of this lovely piece.

Akiho composed Longing in 2024, played solo on the steel pan. Looking like a chef cooking a meal, his body shifted direction in small jumps, with arms and hands doing the stirring. A repetitive theme emerged from the left hand, and from the right hand, a filigree of singing notes. (The amount of music coming from one instrument continues to amaze!)

Composed in 2007, Karakurenai is the Japanese word for “crimson.” Akiho possesses synesthesia, meaning that he sees colors when he hears certain notes.  Evidently crimson is the color he sees when he hears F#, which is the principal key associated with this piece. Akiho describes Karakurenai as incorporating an ostinato of thirty-one 16th notes against a melody of quarter notes, played by a “prepared” tenor steel pan. The pan is prepared with four magnets, which lower the four respective pitches one half-step. The right hand uses a piece of cardboard to dampen the timbre of the ostinato, and the left had plays the melody with a chopstick. (Not to be played by an amateur.)

For this piece, Akiho was accompanied by Sergio Carrero playing (and sitting on) a cajón drum. Toward the end of the piece the two seemed to be urging each other on to an exciting musical climax.

Jennifer Koh

Composer Paul Chihara was incarcerated as a child with his parents in the Minidoka camp. Composer-vocalist-sound artist Ken Ueno commissioned Chihara to create a piece reflecting his experience in the camp. Chihara’s sonata, composed in 2022, is dedicated to violinist Jennifer Koh. It contains nostalgic quotes from a Japanese folk song, Aka Tombo (Red Dragonfly), and I’ll be Seeing You, a popular hit in the 1940s recorded by both Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Violinist Jessica Lee gave it a virtuosic performance at this concert. 

Bunch and Takei Collaborate

While this evening’s performance was the West Coast premiere of Lost freedom: A Memory, it was actually premiered at the Moab Music Festival in Utah, in 2021. Kenji Bunch explained that he had performed his composition Minidoka at the Festival in 2019, and its director, Michael Barrett, suggested that perhaps a larger work would be possible — chamber music with narration! He then suggested the legendary George Takei. This could take place during Covid because the Moab Festival is held outside, so such a collaboration would be possible.

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Bunch knew that Takei, in addition to his starring roles in Star Trek, was well-known as a community activist, had written and starred in a Broadway musical about the Japanese American internments, and had written a graphic novel and a children’s book. Takei trusted Barrett and Bunch, and entered into a collaboration wherein he would write the story of his incarceration and Bunch would compose the chamber music to surround it. Although Takei remained in New York, he had recorded sections of his script for both the beginning and end of his story. Bunch scored his music for string quartet, piano, and percussion, and the work was successfully premiered at the Moab Festival in 2021.

Lost Freedom – The Story

On this evening, Takei sat quietly in a chair raised slightly above the musicians while Bunch told the story of their collaboration, how it had been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (which generated applause), how thrilled he was to be collaborating with George Takei, and, incidentally, how he appreciated working with someone who looked like him. This generated some laughter, to which he responded by repeating the phrase and asking, “Why is that funny?” (Food for thought.)

Again, the musicians included Searmi Park and Jessica Lee, violins; Bunch, viola; Marilyn de Oliveira, cello; and Sergio Carreno, percussion. The piece opened with the soft tinkling of the piano against the gentle resonance of the vibraphone. The sound swelled with the entry of the strings, including a rich passage from the cello, and after this introduction of several minutes, Takei began his story.

“I’ve been called many things,” he told us. “I’ve been called a hero, also slant-eye, enemy alien, American Citizen….” He stated the unfortunate fact, “We looked like the people who had bombed Pearl Harbor.”

Despite his age (88 years) Takei’s voice was robust and controlled, reflecting his many years as an actor and a public speaker.

He told about the trauma to his family from the innocent perspective of a child. How he was only five, his brother four, and his sister still an infant. How they took the train to Arkansas, and his excitement at this foreign place — his introduction to the bayou, where he saw trees growing out of the water, tadpoles turning into frogs, and how he wondered why the grownups looked so sad. 

He told about how the U.S. government wanted Japanese American men to serve in the Armed Forces, and the confusion and angst about leaving their wives and children imprisoned behind. He told about how the U.S. government’s questionnaire to the prisoners about their loyalty was so poorly worded that his parents answered it mistakenly, which meant that the family was sent to another camp for “troublemakers” at Tule Lake in California. There, not only were they surrounded by three layers of barbed wire, but the guards had machine guns instead of rifles, and they were patrolled by armored trucks and tanks.

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Lost Freedom – The Music

At times the narration was accompanied by music; at other times Takei spoke in a background of silence. The music and the meaning of the narration seemed to be interdependent and interwoven throughout. Bunch was emphatic about the fact that this is an American story. He did not want allusions to Japanese music. He wanted music that sounded American. If by that he meant straightforward — solemn at times, joyful and optimistic at others — he seemed to accomplish it quite well.

At one point, when Takei told about the bravery of the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat team stationed in Europe during World War II, the musicians began to hum as well as play their instruments. He told about how they had the highest casualty rate and were also the most decorated of all the American regiments. 

At another point there was a roll call in which each musician stood, named one of the camps, and gave the number of people imprisoned there — 18,000 for Tule Lake, the largest of any of the camps. At times we heard the rat-a-tat-tat of the snare drum, and then during this exercise the clicking of the temple blocks, followed by the boom of the bass drum after the name of each camp.

The music became solemn when Takei talked about reintegration, consisting of a ticket to anywhere in the U.S., and $25 in cash — this for having their constitutional rights taken away and being wrongly imprisoned for four years. Then the music became uplifting when Takei told about how he testified before the U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians and The Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which gave a formal apology and provided restitution to the survivors.

Takei ended his narrative with a cautionary statement: “Americans must strive to redeem what happened 44 years ago. Democracy depends on all of us to keep it strong and true and shining.”

Many were moved to tears.