As we remember the people, families, and communities whose lives were uprooted by Executive Order 9066, I’d like to share a gift I was given almost 5 decades ago. Please join me in a moment of quiet reflection:
In the late 1960’s, I volunteered to help every Wednesday at the Hamilton Senior Citizens Program in San Francisco. Back then this Senior Program was comprised entirely of our Issei, first generation Japanese and Japanese-Americans, mostly women.
During our afternoons together, I would try to ask them about the Camps. It was a subject our second generation, Nisei, never-ever talked about.
When my persistence wore them down, to my dismay, they talked lightly about the experience. “Oh there were baseball games and sumo; and we learned to knit and sew…”
I wanted them to share their suffering and resentment for the injustices they had endured. I wanted to become their advocate and become angry and indignant for them, because they would not.
One afternoon, when again I persisted with my questions, a wonderful grandmotherly woman, Mrs. Kiyo Hirano, pulled me aside and quietly said, “Sono Camp no hanashii wa mo yamenasa.” (“Stop talking about the Camp.”) “Mochiron, Tsurakatta.” (“Of course it was hard.”)
Then she told me not to pick up pain and hardship that was not mine.
She said that the Camp was her hardship, and the anger stops with her.
She said that if she lived with hate, she would never have been able to live her life.
Then she warned me—if I pick up this pain and anger, it would poison my life. She used the word “poison.”
We, who are a part of the generations that have followed, have been given a wonderful gift; a gift from all those who endured the humiliation and injustice that was euphemistically referred to as “Camp.” From them we received the gift of No Anger.
On this Day of Remembrance, to those who have endured and sacrificed so much, please know that we, the generations that have followed, are forever grateful for this gift that has been too easily overlooked and taken for granted.
Namo Amida Butsu — Let us try to live with Kindness and Gratitude beyond words.
