Allegiance, the musical that is based on a true story, is coming to Los Angeles from Feb. 21 to Apr. 1 at the Aratani Theater in Little Tokyo. The musical stars George Takei, who is best known for his role of Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek, and is set during the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. It follows the story of the Kimura family, who were forced to leave their homes on the attack at Pearl Harbor. Although there have been previous Broadway musicals that have touched on Asian/Asian-American topics, Allegiance is “the first [Broadway] musical created by Asian Americans, directed by an Asian American with a predominantly Asian cast [and] an Asian-American viewpoint informing the work.”

Allegiance was quite literally born out of a coincidence, a chance encounter between a theatrical composer and a Japanese-American man who had been interned during World War II. In 2008, Takei and husband Brad Altman sat next to Jay Kuo and Lorenzo Thione in an Off-Broadway show, where a brief conversation revealed a mutual love of theater. Coincidentally, they were seated together again the following day at the Broadway show In the Heights. During the intermission, when Kuo and Thione asked Takei why he had been so affected by the father’s song (“Useless”) in which he laments his inability to help his family, Takei recounted his experience in an internment camp and his own father’s sense of helplessness. Feeling Takei’s story would make a great theater piece, Kuo and Thione began developing the musical that year.

As mentioned, the plot of Allegiance is inspired by Takei’s personal experiences as a child in a Japanese internment camp. In 1942, the Takei family was forced to live in the converted horse stables of Santa Anita Park before being transferred to Rohwer War Relocation Center in Rohwer, Arkansas and later the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California. Similarly, in the musical, the Kimura family is forced to leave their farm in Salinas, California and is relocated to the Heart Mountain internment camp in rural Wyoming. Allegiance retraces the memories of Sam Kimura, now an aged World War II veteran. The audience can see that the war creates and widens the rift between Sam and his family; Sam seeks to prove his patriotism to America by fighting in the war, while his sister Kei protests the U.S. government’s treatment of the Japanese people. He also meets with his traditional father, and enters into a forbidden relationship with a white Quaker woman. Additional problems continue to slowly eat away at already strained family ties, culminating in Sam leaving his family. However, as he comes to learn, it is never too late to forgive and return to a forgotten family member.

Allegiance has been met with thunderous applause by audiences and has also made critics a little teary-eyed. This musical is definitely one you should watch with family. For more information about Allegiance, please visit their website at http://allegiancemusical.com/LA/