My older brother Liam and I sat on the sun-warmed asphalt of the West Los Angeles Buddhist Temple parking lot, nestling our small yet gangly bodies in front of a row of tables with plastic folding chairs. The July sun beamed down on our eager shoulders as we waited for the taiko performance to start. The Obon Festival was in full swing. To our right, rows of white tents offered sun protection for old ladies selling sushi bento boxes next to sturdy men tending to the teriyaki beef on their grill, its caramel scent calling out my name from across the lot. We sat with shave ice in hand, sticky-sweet syrup dripping down our fingers, watching the drummers calmly walk out and approach the taiko. From the first strike of the drum, we were entranced. The players’ movements were lightning, and their rhythms were thunder that made me want to cover my young ears for protection. But I could feel the reverberation in my chest, and it told me to lean in and absorb every soundwave. Instead of covering my ears, I placed my hand on my heart. I felt that pulse of energy move through me. These drums, they were once trees. They speak. They are the heartbeat of the Earth.
Through an open door I saw another maze of plastic folding chairs: The Bingo Room. My mom and I entered the small community room and saw several people sitting calmly around wooden tables with their ink daubers in hand. I watched one woman tenderly look up above her glasses at The Bingo Man as he called out letters and numbers. B13. O64. My mom paid for a sheet of three Bingo cards and I sat down next to her. More letters and numbers. N44. G57. My ten-year-old brain found it fascinating how everyone could have a different card with a different set of letters and numbers. How cool that each card is unique, that each card could be a winner! My mom tore off one of the cards for me to play, and I was so content to have my own sheet of letters and numbers.
I would later learn that my grandfather was also ten years old when he was given a set of letters of numbers: H0097-F. That’s what was printed on the identification tag the U.S. government gave him during the Japanese American internment in World War II. There’s also 1-O2-D: my family’s barracks address at camp in Jerome, AR.
The Yoshimura family was living in Honolulu, HI on December 7th, 1941, and witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor. Two months later on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced evacuation of all persons of Japanese descent living on the West Coast of the United States. Ordered to leave their homes and bring with them only what they could carry, over 120,000 Japanese Americans would soon be sent to incarceration camps that the government mildly called “War Relocation Centers.” These camps were often in the middle of the desert, featuring rows of wooden barracks enclosed by barbed wire fences and watch towers with armed guards. Most of the incarcerated were natural-born American citizens who had never even set foot in Japan, yet their livelihoods and identities were reduced to letters and numbers in the name of “national security.” While the evacuation orders did not apply to most of the Japanese in Hawai’i because of their central role in the economy and Hawaii’s distance from the mainland United States, there were still 1,108 Japanese Americans that were incarcerated; members of my family were seven among them.
My grandfather died about two years before I was born, so I never had the chance to meet him. My whole life, I’ve been forced to love him secondhand. I know his voice only through photographs. I embrace his bright-eyed smile, the smile of a child younger than me, unaware he is being imprisoned, to him it’s just called camp. I think the crinkle in my eyes when I smile comes from him, the little boy in the striped socks. I wish so dearly that I could speak with him.
I often forget that my mother never met her grandfather either. Kuniichi Yoshimura was born in Japan in 1883 and died in Hawaii in 1947, more than 20 years before my mom was even born. He had a tragic death—he was out fishing when his small boat was run over by a Dole Pineapple barge, and all they were able to recover was his red t-shirt. I remember when my mom first told me that story, which she had only heard secondhand herself; we couldn’t fathom how her grandfather was born in the 19th century, how far away his life seemed. But when I think of Kuniichi as her father’s father, he doesn’t feel quite so far away.
Now here I am, Kuniichi’s great-granddaughter, reading about his dreams. He kept a journal between January 24, 1943 and May 17, 1947, in which he documented his incarceration experience. His entries are often brief; most are no more than five words. Pacific Ocean is unusually calm, he wrote during the nine-day boat ride from Honolulu to San Francisco. He detailed some of his dreams during his time at the camps in Jerome and Rohwer, AR:
I had a dream this morning - there was a farewell party as I was about to leave for a destination unknown.
I had a weird dream that Nishimura’s mother died. She came back to life while preparing funeral service.
I saw a dream that a group of three unknown internees escaped from the camp on a boat.
I had a dream riding on the nose of an elephant and walking the street.
I dreamed last night - Umekichi Umeda’s house was on fire and he was killed.
I had a strange dream last night that the mother of Mr. Nishimura passed away and her corpse was still there even though cremated. I carried her on my back to a newly- built palace-like house which cost me $5000 to build.
To know the inner-workings of his mind, a glimpse into his subconscious—it almost feels too intimate. I never knew him, my mother never knew him, but he feels so close when I read about his dreams. I wish I could tell him that I too know what it is to wake up and feel flush with disorientation, to marvel at the ingenuity of your own mind while simultaneously startled by its disturbing ability to distill daily discomforts into nonsensical stories that somehow felt so real in the moment. I think maybe I inherited my wild dreams from Kuniichi, my great-grandfather who I never met.
I wish I could tell him about my dolphin dream. It went something like this: I’m swimming in the ocean in Hawaii, floating on my back in the sandy green-blue expanse. A dolphin approaches. The dolphin is tentative yet calm, investigating me like a dog sniffing the back of my hand. It decides to come closer. I extend my hand and caress the top of its head. Everything about this is lovely. Then the dolphin speaks: Can I tell you something? It’s getting a little warm in here. The tender anxiety in her voice breaks my heart. It occurs to me that the animals understand what’s happening, they understand what we’re doing to the planet. They feel it. This dolphin can literally feel the ocean getting warmer, and she is suffocating from the heat. The only thing I can think to say is I’m so sorry. I’m going to do everything I can to fix this for you. I am startled awake and immediately sit up in my bed. I’m breathing heavily; I too am suffocating. We have so much work to do.
The wooden stool underneath me is at just that awkward height that it would honestly be more comfortable to stand for my whole five-hour shift. I work at the Stanford Golf Course, but please please please don’t tell my friends in Earth Systems. I mean, doesn’t it seem a bit contradictory to be an environmental advocate who works at a golf course? A bit embarrassing to support an industry that overtakes native lands, that uses more gallons of water per day than you want to admit, that caters to Wealthy Old White Men Who Don’t Believe in Climate Science, all while being someone who honors indigenous knowledge and grieves for the loss of plants and animals from this environmental disaster we’ve gotten ourselves into? Doesn’t that seem a little hypocritical?
The irony is not lost on me. But I’ve also been a golfer my whole life because of my grandfather, Albert. He was the one who got my mom hooked on golf, he was the one who gave my then-newborn brother Liam a tiny little pitching wedge and those Cute-Because-They’re- Small baby golf shoes, he is the one I hear in my head every time I swing, Break back, and, through, reminding me to pause at the top of my swing. Of course, I never met him, so I never actually heard him say that. I’m probably just hearing my mom’s voice in my head. But Mom says Dad would repeat that phrase over and over, and she means her own father, so he doesn’t feel quite so far away when I’m golfing.
I push the wooden stool to the corner. I’m standing next to my coworkers Glenn Matsuda and Kimmy Minase, and it occurs to me that all three of us are Japanese American. I gently ask both of them if they are Japanese, feeling a tinge of guilt knowing that they probably see me as one of those white people who asks Asians, So... what are you? When they both confirm they are Japanese, I quickly justify my asking by saying I’m Japanese too! Both of them look surprised. Really? Glenn asks. Does he think I’m lying? Sometimes I wish I didn’t look so white. I explain that I’m yonsei (fourth generation) from my mom’s side and that my family immigrated to Hawaii, but it’s only once I start talking about our internment history that they finally seem convinced. I wish I didn’t always have to resort to the internment to prove that I’m Japanese.
It’s not the first time someone has questioned my ethnicity. When it came up in conversation with my math professor, he was in such disbelief that he had the audacity to tell me: You’re not Japanese. Every memory that ever made me feel connected to my Japanese American identity rushed through my brain at once. I’m bowing in at the start of taiko practice, Yoroshiku onegaishimasu. I’m in the kitchen with my mom, marinating beef skewers in her homemade teriyaki sauce, its ginger-sweet scent diffusing deep into my lungs. I’m putting on my happi, tying my obi, and twisting my hachimaki around my forehead before performing at the Obon Festival, seeing a bit of myself in all the little kids scattered on the grass like Liam and I used to. I’m captivated by the koinobori streamers swimming through the air at the Cherry Blossom Festival, watching as they gulp up the breeze that fills them up like water balloons. I’m in the gift shop of the Japanese American National Museum. I’m dipping my ring finger knuckle of a ruler into the rice to make sure I added the right amount of water. I’m bowing out at the end of taiko practice, Otsukaresama deshita, these foreign words finally feeling comfortable in my mouth. These memories are so vibrant in my soul, but Glenn, Kimmy, and my math professor saw none of them.
When I play taiko, an intangible wave radiates through the drum, through me. To say it is intangible is not to say I don’t feel it. I’ve seen sound waves move fabric. Yes, really, that one rehearsal we were playing so loudly that the fabric fell off the xylophone, there was no wind, we were inside, nothing could have moved it other than the resounding power of our drums. Speaking of wind, she is a sound I feel. She greets me. She turns the pages of my journal. Is she trying to read it?
Sound surrounds me in Frenchman’s Park: the gentle crush of crispy leaves beneath shoes and the harmonious chatter of birds. There is a rhythm in their song; I try to transcribe it as kuchishoka, the auditory notation system through which taiko music is taught. It doesn’t quite translate. And then there is this grinding, so industrial and berating, like nails in my ear, a reminder of all that continues to be lost. The birds keep singing; they don’t seem to mind. Maybe they do. And if I look in just one corner, at just the trees and their brown leaves scattered about like fingernail clippings that will one day become the soil they rest upon, in just this corner I’m no longer on the side of a residential street. The trees above me are so generous, holding out their arms as if offering a gift, but also extending out for light. I dwell in her shadow. And I’m sitting on a tree, this tree is holding me, but the tree is dead. More than a stump, a chair, a tree carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I sit in a place like this and I keep thinking about what Caroline said to me the other day, how she can’t believe anyone would study anything other than the Earth. And I feel this intense pressure, that some people, even if they understand what’s happening, they just trust us to fix it. And they say Earth Day Every Day, but they don’t truly celebrate her every day. I think about her every day. I grieve for her every day. I wish to speak with her every day. I do my best to listen to the sounds surrounding me. I’m in a different park, and there is another grinding, these clashes of metal like a medieval swordfight, another reminder of all that continues to be lost. It is a tree, and she is screaming. I can’t see her, but I hear her. I hear the metal claws of the woodchipper tearing apart her bark, ripping her open with their greedy paws. And they call this “Tree Care.” She’s crying out for help. How am I supposed to just sit here? I want to run to the men over there and say HEY! Can’t you hear that you’re hurting her?! But I already know their answer. They don’t hear her. And they probably wouldn’t hear me. I keep coming back to this one argument that Mom told me about. It was a family road trip. She was young, maybe 8 years old. They were driving through Arkansas, and they could have made a detour and gone to see the camp in Jerome where my grandfather spent the formative years of his childhood. He wanted to drive through, to return. No, Grandma Nora asserted. There’s nothing there. I’m quite surprised that my grandfather wanted to return, because many of the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated did not talk at all about their experiences in the camps. Overwhelmed by the shame of it all, many internees bottled up every memory and left them buried in the dust. Being “Japanese American” became about being “American.” Assimilation was a survival tactic. Silence offered the illusion of healing. But what does that leave us with? Once these people are gone, their stories are gone. Our culture is gone. I wonder if there’s anything about that now deserted landscape that would have reminded my grandfather of some small detail, sparked some beautifully miniature memory that I might be able to hold on to years later. I wish I could have talked to him.
Luckily, when the Japanese American Citizens League initiated the movement for financial reparations in the late 70’s, many third-generation or sansei like my mother broke the silence. They started questioning their parents about their experiences, urging them to finally share their stories so that the world could fully understand the injustice they endured. More than that, I think they wanted to know these stories to better understand themselves. Our ancestors’ stories are our stories. So little was spoken about the internment for so long, but these days talking about internment is one of the main ways Japanese Americans connect with each other. We listen to each others’ stories to try to paint a clearer picture of our own, hoping to uncover some neglected puzzle piece that fell behind the couch and has been sitting in the dark dust for years. Just yesterday I met someone whose family was in the same camp as mine and thought, Maybe our grandparents knew each other. They don’t feel so far away anymore.
I like to think it was taiko that saved us. We were done being quiet, done being invisible. Nothing says WE ARE HERE like big loud drums, drums that were once trees. A few weeks ago I performed with Stanford Taiko at the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival. I went out into the crowd after our performance, and there was a little four-year-old boy who wanted to take a photo with me. He is a fifth-generation Japanese American, gosei. I smiled, knelt down beside him, and could feel the tears well in my eyes. I let the grace of this moment envelop me. It is the grace of fulfilled responsibility. I see myself in that little boy, sun beaming on his eager shoulders, shave ice syrup sticky on his hands, wanting to cover his ears and choosing instead to hold his heart.