Hilo Staging of Swingposium Blends Taiko, Big Band to Explore WWII Internment

Big Island Swing Band, in collaboration with San Jose Taiko and Puna Taiko, will stage Swingposium at Aunty Sally Kaleolani’s Lūʻau Hale in Hilo on Wednesday, Feb. 18 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The production blends taiko drumming, jazz-era big band music, swing dance and theater to recreate a lesser-known wartime practice: Japanese Americans in internment camps holding swing dances to sustain morale.

Organizers say the audience will be immersed in a fictional mess hall repurposed as a dance hall set behind barbed wire. The staging invites active participation, placing attendees within the emotional arc of incarceration without due process, the struggle to maintain dignity and hope, and the perseverance of the human spirit. The piece culminates in a community musical that draws performers and audience members into a shared narrative.

For Hilo and the larger Big Island community, the production is both cultural programming and civic education. Swingposium foregrounds an American story of civil liberties and wartime policy that resonates locally in a state where many families have direct ties to Japanese American history. Presentations that dramatize the experience of internment can shape public memory and influence how local institutions - schools, cultural centers and government offices - approach curriculum and commemorative programming.

The collaboration pairs the rhythms and communal force of taiko with the improvisational energy of swing-era big band music, creating a hybrid performance that reflects island multiculturalism. By staging the work at a lūʻau hale, organizers connect formal theatrical techniques with a setting familiar to many residents, lowering barriers to participation and emphasizing community ownership of the narrative.

Swingposium also functions as a prompt for civic engagement. Public events that address governmental actions - including incarceration without due process - invite conversation about accountability, historical redress and the role of civic institutions in safeguarding rights. Local educators and civic leaders can use the production as an entry point for discussions in classrooms, town halls and community groups about the legal and political contexts that allowed internment to occur.

Tickets and additional information are available through the San Jose Taiko website. As Hilo prepares to host the event, residents have an opportunity to witness a melding of musical traditions while confronting a chapter of American governance that still carries lessons for contemporary civic life.