In 1942, Japanese-American residents of Bainbridge Island were the first to be forced from their homes and taken to prison camps during World War II. Japanese Americans across the West Coast would soon follow, and children sent to Japan for school -- known as Kibei -- suddenly found themselves without access to their family, or any way to get home.

That separation is the focus of a new operetta by local librettist AC Petersen and composer Jeremy Berdin, titled "Currents - An Operetta."