Ozawa born and raised in Japan lived a life of hardship and overcoming, he left his life in Japan for the betterment of his life and the fact that he stood up for his rights, as he was against the way that Japan was controlled by the government at the time. He parted ways with his native land of Japan, living in the time of tension in Japan and tension in the United States towards the Japanese. Although Ozawa did not himself live through the internment camps that were built for the Japanese people during WWII he was around in that time, although he was at an elder age. Ozawa saw the freestyle of the haiku poems as a better means of getting messages across and a better way of expression than the traditional forms of poetry, which is why he found fascination and interests in this type of poetry. Ozawa would go on to live in the Central Valley, organizing and taking part in the Valley Ginsha Haiku Kai, a group of poets who found themselves in the art of haiku poetry. They would proceed to right poems about their experiences in the United States as part of the Japanese community.
The poem that caught my attention was one written my Ozawa that reads:
“Sensing permanent separation
as you left me in extreme heat
on gravel road”
This poem can be connected to the way that the Japanese community of the United States felt when they were taken from their homes and put in internment camps by United States officials as well as being made inferior, not being allowed to go/reside in certain locations due to them being Asian. Imagery is used in this poem to paint the picture of what the people taken away lived through. Although they were literally “left” in “extreme heat,” the fact that it is mentioned in its own line helps emphasize and has the reader better understand that there was horrible discomfort in these camps, and although the government tried to mask the camps and claim that this was only for the safety of the American people, the Japanese weren’t treated humanely in these camps, not only living in cramped horrible conditions, but also having to face the extreme weather of the rural location of the camps. The imagery of the “gravel road” allows the reader to imagine the path that the people had to take. When paving a path gravel is commonly used, this path had gravel, but this path paved with gravel lead them to hell. This path lead them to a place of discomfort and deprive them of their freedom on this supposed “land of the free.” I left the first line of this haiku for last as it hits the reader very hard, the “sensing” of “permanent separation” the feeling that you will never have what you had once had again, the separation from that life that the Japanese had worked to hard so build. This line captivated the true feelings of the Japanese people and the feeling that they will never be set free from this cage that they have been put in. Their life and liberty stripped away from them. This short poem, in such few lines manages to captivate the lives of an entire community, who was shunned by a “free country.”
Guadalupe Lemus
Introduction to Poetry 