One of the things after 9/11 that obviously happened
to Muslim Americans was this whole feeling of you're a spy,
you're--
you know, we ought to do something with you.
Now, if you're a Japanese-American,
you remember this and you remember
that the government put 120,000 of you into camps
and then 40 years later apologized and said,
well, there wasn't really any real necessity,
military necessity for it.
And in fact, the government suppressed
FBI reports which said there was no military necessity.
So, this poem is in the voice of a Japanese-American man who
owns a greenhouse, like my grandfather.
And he's one of the leaders of the community.
And they rounded up the community leaders right
after Pearl Harbor.
One of the stories about this is the father of Min Yasui.
Min Yasui is one of the three Japanese-Americans
who took the case of the internment camps
to the Supreme Court.
And they came to Yasui's house and they arrested his father
for two reasons, one that he had a cup
from the Japanese government for being a good businessman,
and that they found a map of the Panama Canal
and they said that he was planning
to blow up the Panama Canal.
And even when he told them, I didn't even
draw that map, that's one of the--
it's a map my kid drew for school--
they said you need to prove to us that you're not planning
to blow up the Panama Canal.
So, some of these men were kept from their families
for the course of the war, and even six months after the war.
So, this is a man who's writing to his wife in another camp.
And again, his friend--
his friend, Basu, plays the biwa.
And he's bruised because the Japanese-Americans
fought among themselves about whether to go along
with the government and prove that the government is
wrong by being super patriots or to protest
what the government was doing.
So, "Letters from Tule Lake Internment Camp, 1942-45."
"Dear Michiko, do songs sound different in prison?
I think there are more spaces between the words.
I think when the song ends, the silence
does not stop singing I think there is nothing but song.
Matsuo's back, his bruises almost healed, a tooth missing.
His biwa comes out again with the stars.
At night we matter.
He sends his regards.
Do you get fed these putrid gray beans?
I hope you haven't swallowed too many of them.
They put my stomach in a permanent revolt, shouting,
no emperor should ever feed his people so harshly.
I agree.
Let's you and I grow skinny together.
Let's keep the peace.
Any second, the lights will go out.
I look around and see many honest men
who hide their beauty as best they can.
I think that's what the whites hate,
our beauty, the way we carry the life of plants inside us,
seedlings and fruit, flowers and a flush tree,
fields, feed, weeds.
Why can't they see the doors inside them?
So.
If they find an answer to that, they
would find an answer to why those who are hungry and cold
go off to battle, though they get hungrier and colder
farther from home.
9 o'clock, the lights all out.
Sometimes, Michiko, I think of my greenhouse,
how I used to stand at night in its freshly steaming dark
and say these are the most beautiful orchids and roses
in the world.
And the fragrance seeped inside me,
stayed even when I sold them.
What is it like now in Tokyo?
They say it is sunk like a great ship.
Forgive me.
Pressed with a chance to talk to my wife,
more beautiful than any greenhouse rose, all I can do
is moan.
And yet, if I didn't tell you, I would be angry at you
for not listening, blaming you for what I haven't spoken.
And it's too late for that.
Michiko, when you write back, please tell me
what country I'm in.
I feel so poor now.
These words are all I own."