Bruce had been incarcerated at Manzanar, Calif. 11, 2010.īeyond Baroque and the VJAMM Committee dedicated the kaiko haiku reading in memory of Bruce and Francis Kaji, who passed away in 20, respectively. Bruce and Frances Kaji at Beyond Baroque on Dec. Handcuffed and taken away / I see my husband / Even today. Tejyo sare hikare yuku otto o miokurishi sama kyo mo Separated a year ago today / Chinese quince / Must be blooming in my garden. Wakarete kyo wa ichinen niwa no boke mo saite iyo Living, morning and night / Three months in racetrack / Watermelon flowers.īabi ni sumi kurasu aki no suzukake me ga nobiįall / Still housed in stable / New sprouts on plantain tree. Though it’s difficult to select just a few haiku from her collection, these selections reflect life in assembly centers and camps, most amid seasonal signs of nature:īaba ni oki fushite mitsuki suika hanasaki In 2007, she was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in recognition of her contributions to folk or traditional arts in the U.S. In 1987, de Cristoforo published “Ino Hana: Poetic Reflections of Tule Lake Internment – 1944.” In 1997, she published “May Sky,” which was translated into Japanese.
934 at the location of the former Salinas Assembly Center. In 1984, she was instrumental in the installation of California Registered Historic Landmark No. In 1981, she testified before the federal Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) on the socio-psychological impact of the incarceration of persons of Japanese ancestry. 11, 2010: Bruce Kaji, Patricia Wakida, Phyllis Hayashibara, Doug Messerli.ĭe Cristoforo remarried in 1953, and resettled in California. 6, 1945, and that her husband had remarried after his own repatriation to Japan. In 1946, she was “repatriated” to Japan, only to be met with the sad news that both her parents were victims of the U.S. As a result, Matsuda was sent to a detention facility in Santa Fe, N.M., while de Cristoforo and her three children were once again forcibly removed, this time to Tule Lake. Maeda, in preparing for his latest film, “We Said NO NO,” which is about the Tule Lake Segregation Center, discovered that Matsuda had refused to complete the “loyalty questionnaire” while incarcerated in Jerome, Ark. 19, 1942, which led to the forced removal of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast and into American concentration camps for the duration of World War II. declaration of war against Japan and Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Together they owned and ran the Matsuda Book Store in Fresno.īut many poets in haiku clubs destroyed their work in the wake of Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. After her high school graduation, de Cristoforo married Shigeru Matsuda, a charter member of the (Fresno) Valley Ginsha Haiku Kai, and became a member of the Kaiko School of Haiku. VJAMM member and filmmaker Brian Maeda prefaced the haiku recitation with his research on the life of de Cristoforo, who had compiled and translated concentration camp haiku for her book, published by Doug Messerli of Sun and Moon Press.īorn Kazue Yamane in Hawaii, de Cristoforo was sent to Hiroshima for her primary education and returned to the U.S. Poets had written haiku in haiku clubs before World War II, and continued to write haiku during their incarceration, publishing their reflections on life in camp newsletters and literary magazines. Venice Japanese American Memorial Monument Committee members Phyllis Hayashibara, Alice Stek, and Emily Winters read the prose introductions establishing the sections of haiku, originally selected and curated by poet and essayist Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo in 2010 from “May Sky - There Is Always Tomorrow: An Anthology of Japanese American Concentration Camp Kaiko Haiku,” compiled, translated, and prefaced by Violet Kazue de Cristoforo (1917-2007). Beyond Baroque Executive Director Richard Modiano, Sansei poet Amy Uyematsu, and Venice poet Laurel Ann Bogen read the English translations. John Iwohara of Gardena Buddhist Church and Emily Kariya, teacher of Japanese language at Santa Monica High School, repeated their roles from eight years ago to read selected haiku in Japanese. On March 16, Beyond Baroque reprised a 2010 reading of kaiko haiku, free-style haiku not bound by the traditions of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, written in Japanese by internees of Japanese ancestry while incarcerated in assembly centers and American concentration camps during World War II. Third row: Phyllis Hayashibara, Brian Maeda, Emily Winters. Second row: Amy Uyematsu, Laurel Ann Bogan, Richard Modiano. “May Sky” participants at Beyond Baroque on March 16.
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