"Miyoshi Sketches", commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission, pays tribute to the late Tomio John Miyoshi. "Uncle" John was a frequent visitor to our home as I was growing up. He had become a close friend of my parents in their early days immigrating to the US as members of St. Dominic's Catholic Church at Steiner and Bush in San Francisco very close to Japantown - our first apartment in the US was on Webster St. Through him, my parents had overcome their feeling about Japanese people from the war, particularly because of Miyoshi's experience as a Japanese American who had been incarcerated in World War II prison camps and who subsequently served  in the US Army. Uncle John had been a member of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) assigned to the occupation of Japan. The MIS, primarily Japanese American soldiers, were recruited to serve as Linguists in the Pacific Theater of the war, interpreting captured documents, interrogating prisoners, and as battlefield translators. They were honored for their service with a Presidential Unit Citation in 2000 and the Congressional Gold Medal (along with other Japanese American WWII veterans) in 2010.
 
As a civilian after the war he would find employment in the office of the head of security for the Sixth Army at the Presidio under the late Colonel Thomas Sakamoto. I would later get to know Colonel Sakamoto in my years of service with the National Japanese American Historical Society, who spoke fondly of Uncle John. I wrote this work in part with Chizuru Kineya in mind, who was inspired upon hearing my 2010 collaboration with Yangqin Zhao and Melody of China.
 
"Year of the Monkey" and "The Dream" have their roots in workshop ensembles with Jim Norton and others around 13 years ago. Year of the Monkey references my late mother Noela Wong's experience growing up on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius of Chinese and Creole ancestry from 1927-1939. Among my favorite stories was about her pet monkey. The Dream is my take on the notion of the "dream deferred" from African American literature, updated more recently by the efforts to realize DREAM immigration legislation offering paths to citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
 
Tha shamisen-only version of "Miyoshi Sketches" is a special bonus representing the closeness between Tatsu Aoki's concepts and mine, particularly in the transformative power of improvisation.
 
Please enjoy this milestone for my body of work as well as for Asian Improv's catalog on this momentous 30th anniversary of our founding.
 
Francis Wong - 2017