Casting: "Nisei" Pan Am reboot

[lirazel]

“In 1955 Pan American World Airways began recruiting Japanese American women to work as stewardesses on its Tokyo-bound flights and eventually its round-the-world flights as well. Based in Honolulu, these women were informally known as Pan Am’s ‘Nisei’—second-generation Japanese Americans—even though not all of them were Japanese American or second-generation. They were ostensibly hired for their Japanese-language skills, but few spoke Japanese fluently. This absorbing account of Pan Am’s’“Nisei’ stewardess program suggests that the Japanese American (and later other Asian and Asian American) stewardesses were meant to enhance the airline’s image of exotic cosmopolitanism and worldliness. As its corporate archives demonstrate, Pan Am marketed itself as an iconic American company pioneering new frontiers of race, language, and culture. [This is] the story of an unusual personnel program implemented by an American corporation intent on expanding and dominating the nascent market for international air travel. That program reflected the Jet Age dreams of global mobility that excited postwar Americans, as well as the inequalities of gender, class, race, and ethnicity that constrained many of them.” – the blurb for Airborne Dreams: “Nisei” Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways by Christine Reiko Yano







“Nisei” Pan Am reboot
Keiko Agena - Miki Ishikawa
Marisa Tayui - Amy Okuda

4 “Nisei” stewardesses living the Pan Am dream: The pursuer, Kasumi (Keiko Agena), is trying to decide whether to take the CIA’s offer to work as a cover operative: she believes in the fight against the Soviets, but she still hasn’t forgotten the years her family spent in an interment camp. Miné (Marisa Tayui) is about to age-out, which her long-time boyfriend thinks means they’ll be marrying soon; she still hasn’t thought of a way to tell him that she’s not ready for that step yet and wants to start a career instead. Party-girl Diana (Amy Okuda) is in it for the adventure and knows the best bars in every major city in the world, but lately, she’s finding herself focusing more and more on politics. Newly orphaned and without any family, Sara (Miki Ishikawa) is using her commitment to her new job and her worries over the fact that she doesn’t speak any Japanese to distract her from thinking about all she’s lost, not to mention the fact that she has absolutely no idea what she wants to do with her life. Sure, they’re living in Hawaii and travelling all over the world as the most glamorous stewardesses on earth, but life is anything but simple.

Comments

[gigi-tastic.livejournal.com]

So is this going to be a new tv show? A movie? Or is it a book? I'm kind of out of it so I don't get it. All I know is this sounds amazing, the women look fantastic and I want it whatever it is.

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

penny_lane_42 is brilliant at fan casting, where she takes a show and either swaps the characters' race so that white characters are people of color and vice-versa, or she swaps the genders, casting all the male characters with female actors and vice-versa. Here she's reimagining the show Pan Am with Japanese actresses because Japanese stewardesses were a real thing in Pan Am the company's history.

[gigi-tastic.livejournal.com]

Oh I feel silly. I was all excited. I forgot she does this!

[mollivanders.livejournal.com]

yesssssss. this is one of the reasons I can't watch the show right now -- too white-washed.

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

So this is what you were up to all afternoon! Of course I think it's a brilliant (and necessary) idea, I just hope the show adresses the Nisei stewardesses somehow, like having them be another team of stewardesses Maggie knows or something.