Lee Cataluna: ‘A Walking Shadow’ steps into mind of a murderer

“Until we have understood his personality so thoroughly and the circumstances of his life so fully that we can actually feel how he came to act as he did, we have not given him the defense to which he is morally entitled. We cannot discover to what extend society is to blame for this hideous crime or what social changes we should endeavor to bring about.”

That quote, written 90 years ago by University of Hawaii professor Dr. Lockwood Myrick, was argued on behalf of a murderer.

The case of Myles Fukunaga is one of the most notorious crimes in Hawaii history. Fukunaga was 19 years old, dispossessed and mentally ill on Sept. 18, 1928, when he kidnapped a young Punahou student named George Jamieson from campus, took the boy to a grove near the Ala Wai canal, killed him and then wrote a ransom note to the child’s wealthy father, an executive at Hawaiian Trust Bank, which was preparing to evict Fuku­naga’s family from their home.

Fukunaga was arrested, taken to trial and executed by hanging at Oahu Prison in 1929.

Students at Windward Community College are taking an in-depth look at the mind of the murderer, and the societal circumstances to which Myrick referred, in a theatrical production that opens Oct. 19 at Paliku Theatre.

Theater department faculty member Taurie Kinoshita is directing the play, “A Walking Shadow,” in which Fukunaga is the protagonist of the story and the audience experiences some of what may have led him to his horrific crime.

“There are so many angles to focus on in this story. We’re focusing on agency,” Kinoshita said. By that, she means questioning whether Fukunaga was sane and in control of his actions at the time of the kidnapping and murder. To her mind, he was not.

“I really think he was mentally ill,” she said.

Kinoshita wrote the script for the play based on records of the case and letters Fukunaga wrote from prison. The performance is being staged in an expressionistic rather than realistic drama. Fukunaga is played by one actor, and his psychosis is portrayed separately.

The voices in his head are embodied by two actors who start off as whispers off stage but then become raging, controlling presences on stage alongside Fukunaga as he descends into madness. Only the audience and Fukunaga can see them; the other characters can’t.

“It’s a specific way of staging that speaks to his delusions, with movement sequences and mirroring each other and choral with voices.”

In the part of the story where Jamieson is killed, the actor playing Fukunaga becomes the child while the “voices” become the killers.

When Kinoshita talks about the story, she makes it clear this isn’t just a play about a sensational old crime. It’s about issues of social inequity, the stigma of mental illness and concepts of justice, back in the 1920s and today.

“His defense attorney called no witnesses,” she points out. “He never got a full psychiatric evaluation … Justice and protecting society would still be served by life in prison … Fukunaga was 19.”

There was little available to treat mental illness at the time, and even the ineffective and barbaric treatments of that era were unavailable to the desperately poor Fukunaga family.

Each performance of the play will be preceded by a discussion about mental illness led by a mental health counselor.

“We’ve invited students into rehearsals to give us feedback,” Kinoshita said. “One student said the play gave him a new understanding of mental illness, and he said, ‘I don’t feel sorry for him but I feel sorry for what happened to him.’”

Before opening night, Kinoshita will take her students to visit Fukunaga’s grave in Moiliili. The inscription on the large stone is written in Japanese.

“Somebody still brings fruit and flowers,” Kinoshita said. She’s not telling anybody how they should feel, but, like Myrick, she believes that perhaps society can be made better by understanding.

“Everyone knows someone that deals with mental illness or needs help,” Kinoshita said. “The less stigma there is about mental illness, the more comfortable people will be about getting help.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.