Do we really have to keep begging Hollywood to cut it out with the whitewashing? Apparently, yes.White actor Zach McGowan was just cast to play Hawaiian native Benehakaka “Ben” Kanahele in the upcoming World War II film “Ni’ihau."Ironically, the film will chronicle the true story of the Ni’ihau Incident, which is what was used as the justification for the internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans - an effort led by white men in the U.S. federal government.
Hollywood could have easily cast a Hawaiian actor like Jason Momoa to play this role - NOT another white man!The film will chronicle the true story during WWII, when Shigenori Nishikaichi, an Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service pilot, crash-landed in Hawaii after participating in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
McGowan will play Ben Kanahele, a Hawaiian who saves Nishikaichi before learning about his part in the attack. After Kanahele learns the truth, Nishikaichi is apprehended, but Nishikaichi receives assistance from locals in taking hostages and attempting to overcome his captors. He is then killed by Kanahele and his wife, Ella.
How can people of color imagine themselves as the heroes of their own stories if they never see themselves reflected in leading roles in film? What does it say to people of color when their features are omitted from mainstream media, as if they never existed? What does it say when the hero of a story is rewritten as a white man, when in reality, white men were complicit in that hero's subjugation?
Please sign this petition to demand Kanahele's role in “Ni’ihau" be recast as a Hawaiian actor! 