WEBVTT

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One of the things after
9/11 that obviously happened

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to Muslim Americans was this
whole feeling of you're a spy,

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you're--

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you know, we ought to
do something with you.

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Now, if you're a
Japanese-American,

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you remember this
and you remember

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that the government put
120,000 of you into camps

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and then 40 years later
apologized and said,

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well, there wasn't really
any real necessity,

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military necessity for it.

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And in fact, the
government suppressed

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FBI reports which said there
was no military necessity.

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So, this poem is in the voice
of a Japanese-American man who

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owns a greenhouse,
like my grandfather.

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And he's one of the
leaders of the community.

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And they rounded up the
community leaders right

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after Pearl Harbor.

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One of the stories about this
is the father of Min Yasui.

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Min Yasui is one of the
three Japanese-Americans

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who took the case of
the internment camps

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to the Supreme Court.

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And they came to Yasui's house
and they arrested his father

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for two reasons, one
that he had a cup

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from the Japanese government
for being a good businessman,

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and that they found a
map of the Panama Canal

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and they said that
he was planning

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to blow up the Panama Canal.

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And even when he told
them, I didn't even

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draw that map,
that's one of the--

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it's a map my kid
drew for school--

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they said you need to prove
to us that you're not planning

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to blow up the Panama Canal.

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So, some of these men were
kept from their families

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for the course of the war, and
even six months after the war.

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So, this is a man who's writing
to his wife in another camp.

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And again, his friend--

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his friend, Basu,
plays the biwa.

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And he's bruised because
the Japanese-Americans

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fought among themselves
about whether to go along

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with the government and
prove that the government is

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wrong by being super
patriots or to protest

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what the government was doing.

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So, "Letters from Tule Lake
Internment Camp, 1942-45."

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"Dear Michiko, do songs
sound different in prison?

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I think there are more
spaces between the words.

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I think when the song
ends, the silence

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does not stop singing I think
there is nothing but song.

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Matsuo's back, his bruises
almost healed, a tooth missing.

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His biwa comes out
again with the stars.

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At night we matter.

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He sends his regards.

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Do you get fed these
putrid gray beans?

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I hope you haven't
swallowed too many of them.

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They put my stomach in a
permanent revolt, shouting,

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no emperor should ever
feed his people so harshly.

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I agree.

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Let's you and I grow
skinny together.

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Let's keep the peace.

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Any second, the
lights will go out.

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I look around and
see many honest men

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who hide their beauty
as best they can.

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I think that's what
the whites hate,

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our beauty, the way we carry
the life of plants inside us,

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seedlings and fruit,
flowers and a flush tree,

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fields, feed, weeds.

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Why can't they see
the doors inside them?

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So.

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If they find an
answer to that, they

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would find an answer to why
those who are hungry and cold

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go off to battle, though
they get hungrier and colder

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farther from home.

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9 o'clock, the lights all out.

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Sometimes, Michiko, I
think of my greenhouse,

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how I used to stand at night
in its freshly steaming dark

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and say these are the most
beautiful orchids and roses

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in the world.

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And the fragrance
seeped inside me,

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stayed even when I sold them.

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What is it like now in Tokyo?

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They say it is sunk
like a great ship.

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Forgive me.

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Pressed with a chance
to talk to my wife,

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more beautiful than any
greenhouse rose, all I can do

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is moan.

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And yet, if I didn't tell
you, I would be angry at you

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for not listening, blaming
you for what I haven't spoken.

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And it's too late for that.

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Michiko, when you write
back, please tell me

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what country I'm in.

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I feel so poor now.

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These words are all I own."

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