Spring’s Isolation

The haiku poem that I believe captured the experience of daily life at the internment camp was “Firm buds will open when the day comes looking up at the trees” (Reiko Gomyo 105). Firstly, I thought it was really interesting that the buds are considered to be in an undeveloped stage, one of those reasons is because the camp was created in the month of February. That being said, many flowers and plants around that month are in their blooming stages, so the season this poem is portraying is close to spring. Furthermore, this poem had its lines that portrayed imagery. For instance, visually you are able to see a flower or a leaf in the development of which the plant is not in full bloom. “Looking up at the trees” also has you visualizing the presence of a tree, only it has no leaves or flowers because the buds remain closed until “the day comes”. The buds are an important symbolization of the many Japanese who felt trapped and isolated through the oppressive conditions in the internment camp. There were many barbed wire fences around the camp along with guard towers as a way to keep surveillance on the Japanese. All the hardships that the Japanese have encountered in the camp was through the buds for this poem. They represented “firm buds” as to say they were closed off from the world but continued to strive in living a normal life.

To continue, the Japanese lives in the internment camp had many of its difficulties but they continued to push through by establishing settlements and building upon their community. In the poem it states, “Firm buds will open when the day comes” which I believe “when the day comes” is referring to the moment of which they are freed from the camp, only then the “buds will open”. In other words, the Japanese would feel full of life once they would leave from the internment camp “looking up at the trees”. In my opinion, this part of the poem was another way of saying there is a chance. Looking towards the trees, looking at its stems, either the buds will grow or will not. Just as the Japanese, even as they stayed in the camp for 3 years in isolation, they built upon their community, it may not have been through hope, but it was a way to make a life out of it.

Celeste Tejeda-Menera

“FREE LAND”Masking Concentration

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