By Alison Minami

This month Center Theatre Group is sponsoring a community play reading of “Little Tokyo Goes Nuclear: A Play in Three Decades – Chapter One.” When Jesus Reyes, CTG’s Director of Learning and Community Partnerships, approached me about writing the piece, he wanted a play that was connected to the Atomic Café of Little Tokyo. The Atomic Café was an iconic Los Angeles landmark, mostly known as a punk rock haven in the seventies and eighties and since demolished to make way for the metro station. Referenced in several popular films and songs, the café was frequented by musicians the likes of David Bowie, Blondie, and Sid Vicious. This is largely attributed to Nancy Sekizawa, otherwise known as “Atomic Nancy”, who was the daughter of its owners and took over the café in the late seventies. Despite its notoriety during the eighties, the café had roots dating back to post war 1940s. As the daughter of a family-owned Japanese restaurant myself, I know all too well the challenges of keeping the greasy wheels of such an establishment open. I wondered how the Atomic Cafe—a gathering place and safe-haven for family and friends—could survive and serve its community for so long. Naturally, first and foremost, the quality of its comfort food must’ve been consistently good, in this case, the café’s chashu ramen and fried rice. But what other factors beyond that?

One of the features of the café that stood out for me in my research was a framed photo of the mushroom cloud, the nuclear explosion of the atomic bomb over Japan, and likely the inspiration for the name of the cafe. From the seed of this photo, two ideas came to mind. Firstly, America as a nation, undergirded by US Imperialism, is obsessed with war. It’s in the fabric of our DNA; the moment we end one war, it seems we are chomping at the bit for another.  I thought about how no matter what decade of the 20^th or 21^st century we are in, the country is always reeling or healing from war. I wanted to explore the thread of war over the years and its impact on the Japanese American community. Secondly, while the very real atomic bomb was powerful and deadly, the word atomic has hyperbolic associations with adjectives like awe-inspiring, astonishing, and incredible. This was no doubt what made the café’s name so ingenious. The dichotomy of power—for good and for evil—almost as though Atomic Nancy were reclaiming what had been taken away from her people via ancestry if not literally from her own family. Further, it is largely known that punk rock was a subversive art form, one that represented people on the margins that were, in their own way, fighting systemic oppression and the rising tide of consumer capitalism and all the sanitization of expression that came along with it.

Also in my research, I came across filmmaker, Tad Nakamura’s short documentary Yellow Brotherhood, an organization of Asian Americans in Los Angeles who mobilized to help at-risk Asian American youth and steer them away from drugs and other negative influences. Too often the Asian American community is relegated as passive or apolitical, when in fact there are so many instances of political resistance and community power. While the Atomic Café is the setting to the play, I knew that I wanted the backdrop of Los Angeles and its political landscape to be a part of the story I told.

With these ideas simmering in my mind, I thought of how I could tell a story of place as though the place itself were the cradle, the character that watches over its children. The children grow up, and the place changes costume, but its bones and its heart remain the same. Ever since reading the entire August Wilson play cycle, I’ve always wanted to write a cycle of my own. At first, I had thought that I could write a 10-minute vignette to represent the characters of my play in each of the decades for as long as the restaurant was open. However, with the good counsel of Reyes and Sonia Desai, CTG’s new Director of Literary and Dramaturgy, I decided to give both the café and its characters some more breathing room to tell their stories. This has led me to the three-decade cycle, enough time to show what changes and what endures in a family touched by war and struggling to survive.

In this fictionalized story, Troy and Kei meet at the Atomic Café in 1965 amidst the Watts Riots.  Troy is under pressure from his elders—his father and his aunt Yoshiko, owner of the café, to enlist in the army, but he has other ideas of how he wants to live his life. The two fall in love, despite their political differences and opposite personalities. When Kei’s brother leaves for the Vietnam War, she must step up her family responsibilities while wrestling with her own desires as she supports Troy who founds the Yellow Brotherhood, and later, organizes for the reparations movement for Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII. The play, told in three chapters by decade, follows their growth from the 60s through the 80s. As the two help Yoshiko transform the Little Tokyo mainstay into what is known as the iconic Atomic Café, they grow into adulthood, shape their values, and find their voices.

I am so honored that CTG has provided the resources to bring together such a powerfully creative and talented team. Little Tokyo Goes Nuclear: A Play in Three Decades is directed by Fran de Leon and assistant directed by Desiree Fernandez, starring Tamlyn Tomita as Yoshiko, Thomas Winter as Troy, Mika Dyo as Kei, CJ Cruz as Don and Janet Song reading Stage Directions. Please join us for Part 1: The Sixties at the Malabar Library on Saturday, March 22 at 2pm, at the Robert Louis Stevenson Library on Tuesday, March 25 at 6pm, and at JANM (TBA).