Too Young to Remember<\/p>\n
Minidoka, Idaho\u2014 War Relocation Center<\/em><\/p>\n I do not remember the Idaho winter winds, I do not remember miles of clotheslines, Floating in the amniotic fluid, Maybe it was the loss of her home, I recall what Barry, my psychiatrist friend, Sixty years later on drizzly Seattle days, I search for Minidoka, I wish I could remember <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note:\u00a0 The Minidoka War Relocation Center was one of ten U.S. World War II concentration camps that held120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans for approximately three years.<\/p>\n This poem appears in A Cold Wind from Idaho<\/em>, Black Lawrence Press, New York, 2010<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Larry Matsuda<\/a> was born in the Minidoka, Idaho War Relocation Center<\/a>\u00a0during World War II. He and his family along with 120,000 Japanese\u00a0and Japanese Americans were held in ten concentration camps without\u00a0committing a crime and without due process for approximately three years.<\/p>\n Matsuda has a Ph.D. in education and was recently a visiting professor\u00a0at Seattle University. He was a junior high language arts teacher\u00a0and Seattle School District administrator and principal for twenty-seven years.<\/p>\n He studied poetry under the late Professor Nelson Bentley<\/a> at the University\u00a0of Washington and has participated in the Castalia Poetry Reading<\/a>\u00a0Series<\/a> there. He has read his poetry at numerous events in Washington, California,\u00a0Oregon, and Idaho including the famous Kobo at Higo\u2019s venue in Seattle\u2019s\u00a0International District with his mentor Tess Gallagher.<\/a><\/p>\n His poems appear in Poets Against the War website, The New Orleans Review,\u00a0Floating Bridge Press, The Raven Chronicles, Ambush Review, Cerise Press, Black Lawrence Press website, and the International Examiner Newspaper. In 2005 he and two colleagues wrote and co-edited the book Community and difference: teaching, pluralism and social justice,<\/a><\/em> Peter Lang Publishing, New York. The book won the 2006 National Association of Multicultural\u00a0Education Phillip Chinn Book Award. In July of 2010 his book of poetry entitled,\u00a0A Cold Wind from Idaho <\/a><\/em>was published by Black Lawrence Press in New York.<\/p>\n He lives with his wife, Karen, and son, Matthew in Seattle\u00a0and is a consultant presently helping to re-design schools as better physical\u00a0learning environments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Too Young to Remember Minidoka, Idaho\u2014 War Relocation Center I do not remember the Idaho winter winds, knee deep mud that oppressed 10,000 souls or the harsh summer heat and dust. I do not remember miles of clotheslines, mounds of … Continue reading
\nknee deep mud that oppressed 10,000 souls
\nor the harsh summer heat and dust.<\/p>\n
\nmounds of soiled diapers, clatter of families crowded
\ninto barracks, the greasy closeness
\nof canned Vienna sausage,
\nof pungent pork and sour brine
\nexuding from mess halls.<\/p>\n
\ntethered in salt sea, odors
\nnourished by fear and sadness\u2014
\nmy Mother\u2019s anxieties
\nenveloped and nurtured me.<\/p>\n
\nthe sudden evacuation,
\nbeing betrayed by her country.
\nOr maybe it was the stillborn child
\nshe referred to as It,<\/em>
\nsexless blob of malformed tissue,
\na thing without a face that would have been
\nmy older sibling.
\nMy aunt described it as budo,<\/em>
\na cluster of grapes.<\/p>\n
\nsaid about parents emotionally distancing themselves
\nfrom children born immediately after a stillbirth.<\/p>\n
\nwhen November skies are overcast,
\nand darkness begins at 4:00 p.m.,
\nI feel my mother\u2019s sadness
\nsweep over me like a cold wind from Idaho.<\/p>\n
\nunravel it from the memories of others.
\nLike a ruined sweater, I untwist the yarn,
\nstrands to weave a tapestry
\nof pride and determination\u2014
\nthe \u201cchildren of the rising sun\u201d once banished
\nto desert prisons, return from exile
\nwith tattered remnants, wave them overhead,
\ntime-shorn banners salvaged from memories
\nwoven in blood and anguish.<\/p>\n
\nMinidoka. I would trade
\nthose memories for the fear and sadness
\nimbedded in my genes.<\/p>\n