Block 18, Tule Lake Relocation Camp
—for James I. Ina
1.
The emotion of trucks, buses & troop trains
brings them here,
to the wrong side of another state.
A woman at the Klamath Falls depot
calls it the wrong side of the ocean.
2
Crumbs hide around the table legs
in the mess hall,
dishes & silverware
clink a strange song.
Families talk across long tables.
Questions drop like puzzles
to the unfinished floor.
3
Blocks away from their new home
a woman finds a latrine
not backed up. Stands
in line, waiting her turn
in the wind. Down
the center of the open room:
12 toilet stools, six pair,
back to back. Sits down
and asks for privacy,
holding a towel in front of her
with trembling hands.
4
In a North Dakota prisoner-of-war camp,
surrounded by Germans & Italians,
a quiet man
hammers a samurai sword from scrap metal
at night in a boiler room.
A secret edge
to hold against the dark mornings.
He sends love notes to his pregnant wife
in Tule Lake
sewn in pants
mailed home for mending.
His censored letters
mention a torn pocket.
She finds the paper near the rip,
folded & secret in the lining.
White voices
claim the other side of the ocean
is so crowded
the people want to find death
across the phantom river.
Headlines shake their nervous words.
Out on the coast
beach birds print their calligraphy
in the sand.
It is such a small country.
Copyright Credit: James Masao Mitsui, "Block 18, Tule Lake Relocation Camp" from From a Three-Cornered World. Copyright © 1997 by James Masao Mitsui. Reprinted by permission of University of Washington Press.
Source: From a Three-Cornered World (University of Washington Press, 1997)