Benaldo Yeung plays Kanao Inouye a controversial Canadian historic figure known as the Kamloops Kid. Photo by: Grant Dix
TORONTO – A brilliant flash of light fills the stage as the atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Kanao and Martha Inouye are lit only momentarily by the flash, but the desperation in their eyes tells the audience all they need to know about how these two souls have been transformed by war.
It’s a striking moment that – if only for a few seconds – brings the brother and sister back together during their darkest hours, but they are separated by an ocean and armies.
Kanao is being sent to his death as a traitor to his country while Martha is exiled in Canada struggling to survive in an internment camp.
Based off of the experiences of the real Kanao and Martha Inouye, Interrogation: Lives and Trials of the Kamloops Kid is an examination of one of Canada’s most controversial war criminals.
Written by Inouye’s great niece Karri Yano and playwright Evan Mackay the play that debuted at the Toronto Fringe Festival.
Starring Benaldo Yeung and Loretta Yu, the 55-minute play is told through letters sent between the brother and sister from the 1930s to the late 1940s.
The play also doubles as a bit of a history lesson for audiences giving watchers a feel for what it was like in both Japan and Canada during that time in history covering such things as the Japanese Canadians being denied the right to vote in 1936 to the expansionist efforts of Imperialist Japan.
One particular subject that appears throughout the play that connects the brother and sister is the Vancouver Asahi, a Japanese baseball team that played in British Columbia. The team’s effort to win over Vancouverites with their patented “Brain Ball” style of play mirrors the deterioration of their lives.
It is a good examination of the community’s history in Canada and also the historic background of the part Japan played during the Second World War.
However, the play’s focus is a reexamination of Kanao Inouye, the Kamloops Kid.
Marked as Canada’s only Japanese-Canadian war criminal, Kanao is initially placed into a sympathetic light. He’s a 20-something-year-old living in Japan and trying to show how Japanese he is to his family; however, his youth in Canada seems to hold him back.
As the war progresses and his loyalty is questioned, we see his darker side emerge. He tortures Canadian prisoners of war because he knows his own life is expendable in the eyes of his superiors. If he holds back, then he’ll lose his life and never be able to return to Canada.
How far would you go to protect your life? It’s the question that Yeung, in his brilliant performance, begs as he pleads with the audience to understand his plight. He’s a person caught in a war, not the war criminal that history has painted him.
However, the play also recognizes the importance of the history of the Kamloops Kid. Bookending the play are segments where Loretta Yu plays a fourth-generation Japanese Canadian living in Japan.
Yu tells her grandmother in one of her letters that she has learned about her great uncle crimes, but she can’t immediately forgive him for his actions. She can only imagine the world he lived in compared to the one where she’s freely able to be Japanese and Canadian without suffering from the slings and arrows of racism.
It is a great play that brings a controversial figure into the spotlight without forcing pathos onto the character.
Yeung and Yu give spectacular performances and can be seen until July 12 in Toronto.
*Nikkei Voice is the media sponsor of Interrogation: Lives and Trials of the Kamloops Kid.
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[…] of our Toronto Fringe play, INTERROGATION: Lives and Trials of the Kamloops Kid, has published a write up following our opening night on Canada […]
The first charge levelled against Inouye arose from a beating he had given to two Canadian officers on 21 December 1942. On the assembly parade that morning, two men were missing and the camp commandant angrily accused two officers, Norris and Atkinson, of helping their escape. In a fury, the commandant ordered Inouye to slap the officers. He proceeded to do so with gusto, and after they collapsed, he continued to kick them on the ground. Atkinson was so badly beaten about the face that he almost lost an eye. A few days later, Inouye tried to apologise and explain that he had lost his temper Norris refused to accept the tendered apology.
Far more serious charges concerned Inouye’s later career In September 1943 he was transferred to Singapore and shortly thereafter discharged. He returned to Japan in March 1944 and joined one of his relative’s import-export firms. His story took an unexpected romantic twist when the court martial was told of his liaison with a Hong Kong tea room operator, Ho Wai Ming.
She had been known as Mrs. W.R. Parker, the divorced wife of a Shanghai police official. Inouye had fallen in love with her and supported her even after the authorities closed all the tea rooms. However, they could not marry until he received his family’s permission. He obtained this in early 1944 and returned to Hong Kong where he was promptly drafted by the secret police, the Kempeitei, as an interpreter. His duties involved ferreting out spies and traitors, and his new wife’s connections in Hong Kong proved a decided asset.
While the prisoner of war camps had been brutal and inhumane, the work of the Kempeitei was simple murder. Suspects were routinely tortured till they died. The few survivors recounted their torture in vivid detail and pointed to Inouye as the man who had conducted these sessions. One of these witnesses, Rampal Ghilote, described Inouye as the “chief torturer of my body and soul.” Ghilote was accused of being part of a ring of Indian soldiers and civil servants who were still loyal to the British cause and who were sending messages to the British in India. Another witness, Lam Sik, was accused of sending messages to the Nationalist Chinese and endured the water torture from Inouye. As these witnesses trooped into court to tell their stories they looked at Inouye with unmasked hatred and identified him as the man who had subjected them to excruciating torment.
Perhaps the most powerful witness was a 55-year-old British woman, Mary Power She was also implicated in spying and was given the water torture by Inouye. After nearly drowning for a half hour, she was left suspended from a hook with her feet barely touching the ground. Inouye then took a lighted cigarette and burned her face, cheeks and hands until she fainted from pain. In his defence, he argued that he always considered himself a Canadian compelled to assist with the translations.
Court President Lieutenant Colonel J.C. Stewart had little sympathy for Inouye. He had committed such acts of “wanton and barbarous cruelty that it was a mere accident of fate whether the victims survived or not.” Moreover, his culpability was all the greater in that he had been raised in Canada and it should have “impressed on your mind the decent ways of civilised people.” He was sentenced to hang. Inouye’s lawyer then appealed and attacked the validity of the court martial. He succeeded.
On 19 November 1946, the confirming authority concluded that as Inouye was a Canadian citizen he could not be tried for war crimes as an enemy soldier and the conviction was quashed. This unexpected result generated a spurt of telegrams from Ottawa questioning whether Canada’s Number One war criminal of the Pacific War was simply going to walk away unpunished. Both External Affairs and DND sent out tentative requests to extradite Inouye to Canada for trial. However, he had left too many victims in Hong Kong to remain unmolested. In December 1946 he was again charged, this time with treason, and bound over for trial.
At his criminal trial in April 1947, he displayed a chameleon-like ability to change his story to suit his audience. Now, he insisted that he was a simple soldier doing his duty. He had been glad to leave Canada for he had endured discrimination and felt “embittered against the Canadian people.” Upon reaching military age, he had eagerly joined the Japanese Imperial Army and served in the China campaign. He felt proud to serve in the Kempeitei and root out spies against his country’s war effort. At one point in his testimony he sprang to attention and called out “My body is the Emperor’s body. Long live the Emperor!” The presiding judge, Sir Henry Blackall, looked calmly down at Inouye and told him that there was no need for theatrics.
Yet the evidence of his brutality was even more ghastly than that brought to light at his previous trial. The quiet testimony of the mother of one if his victims breathed life into the story of her son’s torture and execution.
My dad, Stanley Tyler was taken prisoner at Hong Kong by the Japanese
He survived but lost one lung and one kidney
He had TB and was hospitalized in Seattle and Vancouver for 2 years after the war
I learned from his records that he was a witness at the trial of the Kamloops Kid