Presented by the Japanese American Museum of Oregon and the Oregon Law Foundation:

During WWII, young Japanese Americans (Nisei) incarcerated at the Minidoka Relocation Center in Southeast Idaho faced a paradox: fight for a country that had stripped them of their civil liberties, taken away their freedom and placed them and their families behind barbed wire, not because they were the enemy but because they looked like the enemy; or, resist the draft because they and their families had been unconstitutionally and unfairly incarcerated.

The Nisei Paradox, a theatrical, multi-media stage reading, tells the story of the young Japanese Americans who chose to resist the draft, fighting injustice with civil disobedience from the confines of Minidoka. 32 of them were prosecuted by the federal government; all but one was found guilty. The stage production was created out of the transcripts of these trials in a collaboration between Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald E. Bush and attorney Jeff Thomson; all the performers are drawn from the legal community.

These young men chose a different type of courage than the many Nisei incarcerees who went to war—they chose to resist, to oppose unfair treatment, to stand up to a stacked legal system, only to lose their freedom for a period longer than the 2-year conscription period, longer than the incarceration camps were open, and longer than the war itself.