Hirohito on trial - in play

Emperor Hirohito, one of the biggest war criminals in history who reigned unpunished until his death in 1989, will undergo a mock trial for his aggressive promotion of the Japanese expansion and war crimes during World War II at Historic Hoover Theatre in San Jose, California, on April 5.

It is a play performed by American volunteers of the Foundation Honoring Nanjing Massacre Survivors and based on the book The Crimes of Hirohito: A Grand Jury Trial by American-Chinese writer Iris Chang.

"I think it is very important because I never learned about the Japanese invasion of China or about the Nanjing Massacre in high school," 23-year-old Jenny Chan, the play's producer who runs the foundation, told China Daily on Friday in San Francisco.

"I learned about it from my grandparents who had to move to Hong Kong from China's southern province of Guangdong for their own safety and hid from the Japanese during World War II," she said.

"There is little public education about the war in United States. We study the Jewish Holocaust extensively, but we don't spend any time on the Nanjing Massacre or the war," she said.

"I was really overwhelmed learning about the Rape of Nanking," she said. "As an Asian American, I was ashamed that I didn't really know about it."

Chan moved from Hong Kong to San Francisco with her parents when she was 10 years old. After four years at George Washington high school in San Francisco, she studied economics with a concentration of applied statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From 2011 to 2012, she coauthored reports that assessed the environmental impact of the Illinois High Speed Rail and analyzed the impact of Ford's automotive manufacturing on the Illinois' economy.

Rather than continue to develop her potential in applied statistics after getting her bachelor's, in May 2013, Chan was persuaded by Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco's largest art space, to sponsor her new project: the Foundation Honoring Nanjing Massacre Survivors.

"I am an economist by education, a dreamer by choice and an activist by necessity," she said.

The foundation aims to promote dialogue about the so-called "Forgotten Asian Holocaust" through the arts and theater, she said.

Last year, the foundation staged a play about Minnie Vautrin called Forever Ginling. Last March her team also premiered The Crimes of Hirohito: A Grand Jury Trial at Mojo Theater in San Francisco.

Celebrated activist and Nanjing historian Iris Chang and Minnie Vautrin, who protected refugees in Ginling College, are two characters featured in the play.