Moonlit Summer Sky Above the Same, Black Houses

Yotenchi Agari’s second haiku poem from page 111 captures the experience of daily life at the internment camp by giving readers an idea of what the Stockton Assembly Center looked like, vividly describing it with the use of visual imagery, mentioning color, the season, and the arrangement of the area.

According to Agari’s biography from “There is Always Tomorrow: An Anthology of Wartime Haiku”, Agari was interned at the Stockton Assembly Center in May 1942. While in this internment camp, she wrote the haiku, “Moonlit summer sky/ same black houses/ standing in rows,” (Agari, Pg 111). Observing the visual imagery provided, gave me a sense that the Haiku was mainly centered on the area Agari was interned in which was the Stockton Assembly Center. “Moonlit summer sky” (Pg 111) gives the readers an idea of what time the Haiku takes place. “Moonlit” surely indicates that it’s night, and “summer” assures that it’s during summer. From what was previously informed, Agari was interned in May. During May, summer is pretty hot and humid in California. This enforces the fact that the Haiku is not just any poem, it’s telling an experience Agari had throughout that summer season in Stockton’s internment camp. How does it capture Agari’s experience at the Japanese internment camp though? The second line, “Same black houses” (111) gives a quick description of the internment camps, the place where Agari, along with other Japanese were stationed. She doesn’t just say, “houses” though, she provides detail, stating, they’re the “same” and “black”. Historically, Stockton’s internment camp was filled with black buildings which all looked identical. In these buildings, the Japanese were imprisoned. Observing a photograph of the Stockton Assembly Center taken by Dorothea Lange made it much more evident of how accurate and similar it is to Agari’s description of the “same black houses”.

It made it clear to me that there was a connection between the poem and the historically accurate picture. The haiku’s last line, “standing in rows” makes this historical image even more precise since the houses are also shown all standing in rows. A row is a horizontal alignment of things. It can be a row of people, animals, and even houses. In this case, it’s a row of the same, black houses. To enforce that Agari is actually talking about the Stockton Assembly Center I decided to sketch out a picture by only relying on her haiku’s imagery. My drawing came out fairly similar to Lange’s photograph shared above.

From taking out the adjectives provided by Agari, I was able to draw a quick, visual idea of what she wrote in her poem. Reading about Agari’s life in Stockton Assembly Center, also rang a bell since I believe it only strengthened the idea that her poem is about an internment camp she was kept captive in at the time. She shared a visual concept of how Stockton’s internment camp was established by providing details of season, night, color, and alignment. This is how her imagery invoked captures the experience of daily life in the Japanese internment camps.

Claudia Dominguez

“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

Bland Life

Given the video, it saddens me that many Japanese-Amerians  had to deal with the criticism and backlash from others. Rather than realizing from the outside perspective, Americans immediately assumed that ALL Japanese-Americans were dangerous and not trustworthy.

The poet, Yotenshi Agari, really caught my attention because in the passage, it informs that he gre mums in Central California. Mums —which withhold different symbolisms across cultures— represents rebirth and enduring life. The haiku poem is, “Moonlit summer sky/ same black houses/ standing in rows.” The imagery invoked in the haiku poem captures the horrendous, daily life that these internees experience. They had no other freedom to go elsewhere. Referring to the video, they attempted to bring life and excitement by bringing education, religion and agriculture.

Line 1, “Moonlight summer sky” clearly tells the audience that the poem takes place at night. Like many other internees, Agari would most likely stay up during the night, probably reminiscing his life before being held at the camps. The lines that really stood out to me were lines 2 and 3; “Same black houses/standing in rows (Line 2 and 3),” Agari gives off a solemn, monotonous tone, clearly telling us, the audience, that there was nothing else. That there is nothing else but the moonlit summer sky, that casts it’s rays onto the “same” houses. The “same” harsh conditions. Again, referring to the video, the internees attempted to “build a community.” So, I believe that Agari was trying to build a “sense of community.” Much like in most neighborhoods, there are rows of homes, all build with similar structures.

Evelyn Hernandez

A Broken Promise

World War II was an extremely unfortunate time to be a Japanese American. Following the attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base on December 7, 1941, the United States government declared war on Japan. This led to discriminatory behavior against Japanese individuals living in America, as even though most were completely loyal, registered citizens, many feared they were traitors sent from Imperial Japan to spy. Shortly after the United States entered the pacific theater, internment camps were set up to isolate Japanese Americans from the rest of the country upon this unfair and racially discriminatory premise. Many Japanese Americans were forced to leave everything behind and surrender themselves to the internment camps. These camps were gruesome and inhumane, and in many ways are very similar to the concentration camps of the Nazi regime. Many innocent Japanese Americans described the horrors of their experiences in artistic forms, such as the traditional Haiku poem.

One poem which stood out to me more than some of the others was “At daybreak / the stars disappear / where do I discard my dreams?”. At first this poem seemed a little bit ambiguous, as the only imagery to be explained seems to be the way the stars disappear at sunrise. I was about to move on to another example, when an image of a sunrise filled my mind’s eye. A bright sun sits a little bit above the horizon, it’s polarizing rays beaming through the sky and burning away the night. This is when I remembered that the Imperial Japanese flag depicts a rising sun, bright red with rays that overtake the scene. Following the same train of thought, the top right corner of the United States’ flag depicts a dark blue background spotted with white stars, very similar to a night sky speckled with distant suns. It seems as if the artist was trying to use the imagery of the two flags in their Haiku. It is my theory that the sunrise is a metaphor for the Imperial Japanese forces coming to power attempting to conquer the United States. The fading of the stars represents the liberty and justice that the US promised towards their Japanese American citizens, being scorched away by the rays of the ‘rising sun’ “at daybreak” (Ln. 1). The resulting treatment, including harsh discrimination and relocation to interment camps, very much leaves the dreams and aspirations of Japanese Americans in shambles. This is captured in the last line of the Haiku, “where do I discard my dreams?” (Ln. 3). Additionally, when Japanese individuals were forcefully relocated, they had no choice but to leave their communities, businesses, and homes, and were unable to bring anything with them. It may be the case that “where do I discard my dreams?” (Ln. 3) represents the internal monologue of a Japanese American citizen, wondering what they will do with all of their belongings, friends, and hopes when they are forced to leave it all and succumb to imprisonment. 

Hayden Namgostar