The Road to Camp is Paved with 120,000 Stories

It has come to my attention that several times a year, people approach me, asking for a list of recommended reading on the subject of America's concentration camps of World War II, and seeing that its the end of the year/beginning of the year (still. a week later counts of end of the year) I'm feeling a list coming on:

1.) for the first-time I've heard about camp, all ages appropriate reader
By far, the most engaging, excrutiatingly real, first-person perspective on the camp experience is Mine Okubo's "Citizen 13660". Mine Okubo was reportedly the first camp internee that authored/illustrated a book of her personal experience during the war, and its a stunning visual diary of the most intimate events she was witness to. From the banal to the disgusting, Okubo's minute pen misses nothing. Her lines are as stark and clean as her simple commentary that accompany each drawing.

2.) for the historian, who wants to get to the bottom of things
My knowledge of the camp records and evidence that the entire forced removal of Japanese Americans was not, in fact as the government stated a "military necessity" has been accumulated by reading nearly 100 books, many of them meticulously researched in phases over the past 25 years. But if there were one book that encouraged us to look at the black and white government documentation of the camps and question what had really happened, I think I'd have to turn to Michi Weglyn's "Years of Infamy". In close second is "Personal Justice Denied", authored by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, a report compiled after the overturning of several landmark cases of Japanese Americans who took their cases to the Supreme Court which in turn began the long, complex journey to the apology from the US government and redress.

3.) for those who have never heard about the Japanese Am draft resisters
John Okada's "No-No Boy". Its more about the psychological effects of the war on a JA family in Seattle after the war, than the facts surrounding the draft resisters, but its message is clear: the incarceration of the Japanese Americans turned JAs onto each other.

4.) for those who have never heard about the Japanese American 442nd/100th regimental combat team who fought in Europe, and the MIS who served as secret military interpreters and intelligence in the Pacific
Lyn Crost's "Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans at War in Europe and the Pacific".

5.) for the short story reader
Read Hisaye Yamamoto's "Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories." Some of the pieces cover pre-war scenarios, but the ones that include her life in camp are simply brilliant and devastating.

6.) for the poetry reader
Violet de Cristoforo's "May Sky: There Will Be Another Tomorrow", a brilliant compilation of haiku written by first=generation (Issei) in camps, that were translated and given historical context written by de Cristoforo.

7.) for the artist
This is another tie. Either Karin Higa's "View from Within" which was a groundbreaking book/catalog that accompanied a touring exhibition of original paintings, drawings and sculpture made in the camps by numerous artists, -or- Kimi Kodani Hill's "Topaz Moon", which follows the life and the work of a single artist, Chiura Obata.

Ironically, my list is heavy handed with women authors. Well, hooray for me.

What Does the Inside of Your Head Look Like?

Its January 4th, and with the realization that the new year has begun and I have so very very much in my mind that I need (nay, am paid to) synthesize and articulate to the broad public, ie publicize, it seemed an appropriate exercise to take a short inventory of some of the wooly stuff I'm thinking about right now:

- I cannot begin to talk about the history of the US, American democracy and the culture and sociopolitical world we live in today without bringing up the generations of racism that has suffocated and enfeebled the growth of species.

- We ate fennel and chicken soup tonight with dollops of smokey butternut squash and yam puree on the side. I have been very mindful of my body over the past six, seven years without much of a proactive plan or understanding of how to read my body's changes and demands, but I do know that really good home cooked food is bliss.

- My mother is rapidly aging, and I've been watching some of these stages very slowly over the past few years as well. Perhaps its in tempo with my aging too, but the transition from being oblivious to a sensitive and sympathetic care-taker is finally hitting me. Its one thing to be responsible for a delightful child at the bloom of their youth; and another to ready oneself to catch your mother as her strength ebbs, and she stumbles now and then.

- Since last night, my very magical pet snake has been snuggled into the blankets of the bed and actually slept all night with me and my fiance. Now I imagine this is more likely filed under 'horrific' for the good number of people who stumble across this entry, but it I'm telling you that it makes me crazy happy with delight. She has never, ever, in her 17 years of existence, done this before.

- Really, if I had to make a choice, i would choose art/color/line/paper/ink over writing and reading.

- One cannot have too many awesome calendars. I am an unabashed hoarder of innovative calendars, and love them for their practicality, for the mystery of numbers, the orbit of the sun, an orderly squaring of corners that make a day, and the way that they act a little like kinetic art.

- I'm a little afraid that I'm in over my head.

- Simultaneously, I'm hopelessly in love.

- How do you teach everything you know to another person, to a wholly other mind? How do you bring all the things you don't know, pose those ideas as questions, and incite deep learning? Describe an experience you've had with deep learning.

- I am hopeful about things turning the corner, not just soon, but tomorrow.