Revitalizing Japanese American Internment: Critical Empathy and Role-Play in the Musical Allegiance and the Video Game Drama in the Delta

The incorporation of interactive technology into the memorialization of the World War II incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans enables those with no prior connection to this history to role-play the internment experience. This essay compares the author’s digital role-playing game Drama in the Delta with the Broadway-bound musical Allegiance, arguing that the shared impulse to use performance to walk in internees’ shoes threatens to eclipse historical understanding with an uncritical form of empathy.