It's not widely known that one of the major practices
of the internees, particularly in the Department of Justice
camps, was poetry, traditional Japanese poetry,
and we've been very lucky that much of this poetry
has survived in manuscript, in mimeograph, in calligraphy--
and has been handed down to descendants
in the families who then have offered them to collections.
And we also are very lucky that these poems
have been translated into English by community
translators mostly.
In Santa Fe was one of the largest poetry groups.
It was called The Santa Fe Intaanee Poetry Project,
a name they made themselves.
Intaanee is the Japanese--
or the Romanized-- the Japanified word for internee.
These names were known--
I won't read them all to you, but all the five of these men
now have been identified.
Five of them were storekeepers from Hawaii, three from Kauai.
A couple of them were doctors, and one of them was a dentist.
One was a Buddhist priest.
This is a very amusing piece.
Very charming, I think.
It's a poem by a man who called himself 無声, no voice.
Let me see if I can read it to you.
Here we go.
It's in a very nice 草書, calligraphy and it's a tanka.
エビのまねしても 寝付かぬ 汽車の旅
It's a poem about the evacuation,
about what it was like to ride confined on a train.
"Though curled like a shrimp, I do not sleep on the train."
It actually doesn't say "curled like a shrimp,"
it's like with the body of a shrimp.
I know someone's going to tell me
the translation is a little off.
But I like the other version.
This is just like a piece of a longer poem.
［? 脇戸に満つる ?］ Oh, excuse me.
This is a large piece of calligraphy.
This would be a big piece you would put it
on 床の間, on display in your living room.
And you could see the stroke is very big.
すごい, you know, 力持ち, power.
It's 1944.
Showa 19 and thanks to Michael
for verifying this for me.
I would have called it 1943.
It's New Year's written by 二天, which
is very amusing because this is the pen name of the poet
and painter, the name taken by Miyamoto
Musashi, the great samurai of the 16th century.
So at this point he called himself 二天. Dry brush.
Dry brush.
Yeah.
How many [? fills it up ?].
Oh, this is a bunch of senryu, a lot of them,
by different poets, but all copied down by one hand.
And you can see it's a manuscript or journal
page, a loose leaf notebook.
Senryu were the humorous haiku.
It came up during the 18th century written
by commoners and peasants.
They usually were a little bit bawdy.
They contain modern words and a lot of defecation jokes.
I'll just read a few of them.
And feel free to correct me.
Oh, here's one.
諦めに 慣れもと 夜具の冷たすぎ
"Though accustomed to my despair--
this is very interesting.
Despair means my wet things, the word 慣れもと
so it's also a little sexual, like autoerotic.
I don't know, but--
"Though accustomed to my despair the bedding remains cold."
燦然と 光るつららの 零下五度
"Icicle blazing five degrees below zero."
This is a very interesting one.
敵国の 味方にされて さよなら
"Branded an enemy alien.
Sayonara."
Japanese is a syllabic language.
It's not an accented language, so it carries
its feeling a different way.
物足らぬ 生活費 見飽き 夜に飽き
"Meaningless life, boredom at day, boredom at night."
Oh, here's their translations.
I guess I was going to do a giveaway, print these up,
but I apologize.
Technical difficulties.
So, I like the top one.
また会うと 別れた人に また出会い
"Pledge to meet again, though parted, we chance to meet now."
And this is written by a guy who--
I ran into a friend in Sand island in Honolulu Harbor.
They got detained in different centers,
then they were then sent to Santa Fe,
and then they're there again.
And along with the poetry, there were these great watercolor
paintings, so often the poems would
be illustrated or decorated.
Here are some.
senryu again, some haiku.
[? 局部 ?], a fragment.
万国に この香りなし 大和菊 "Not found on Earth the center
of a Japanese chrysanthemum."
二度の春 留守の園に 和黄菊咲き
"Spring came twice to my abandoned garden.
The yellow chrysanthemum bloomed."
Here's the last one.
丹精の菊 無造作に 消耗され
"Chrysanthemum, lovingly tended, casually requested."
OK.
So more and more and more.
These were not bumpkins, these guys.
They were cultivated men, let's say, practicing peaceful arts.
Even in-- how should I put this-- fucking Santa Fe.
This is a very zen, very, very, very sort of meditative.
仮の宿 住めば都と 振り返り
"As I look back, the barrack was home."
［? かいせつ ?］の趣味のために さよなら
"Fellow poets, goodbye"
This is the moon over Santa Fe detention center.
There's a Memorial there now.
It's quite controversial that it was created.
The [INAUDIBLE] battalion in 1941, stationed at Corregidor,
mostly were killed.
It was one of the first battles of World War two.
These were the ones who were set on the Bataan Death March
as well.
So, when the Memorial for the Santa Fe internees
was proposed, there was a large outcry from the community
that it just could not happen because
of the bitterness of that.
But a descendant of one of the survivors of the Bataan March
stood up and defended the notion of memorializing the Japanese
who were incarcerated there.
His name is Roy Ortiz.
He's a wonderful man, and he's one
of those descended from the original inhabitants of New
Mexico, the Espanola inhabitants,
and he was listened to.
Because of him the spot near the Sangre de Cristo mountains,
on the edge of town of Santa Fe, now has a monument.
This is looking across New Mexico, past Lordsburg,
over the horizon.
The story about my grandfather is that he was just disappeared
and wasn't heard from for many years
until he wound up on the doorstep of his house
in Laie in 1944 as if nothing had happened.
It was like a spaceship came and took him and then dropped him
back.
So the life that returned to after this detention
was fishing in Laie Point.
First report, my father wouldn't talk about it
and the way I figured it out was I went back to the community
papers and the first mention of Kubota
again after he was taken away is he
caught a 49 pound ulua off Laie Point.
Kubota started fishing again.
He caught a 49 pound ulua on Laie Point.