Tuesday, November 07, 2017

Poems

Sunday was momentous in a quiet way. First in the early afternoon, I saw the Alphawood Gallery’s exhibit called “Then They Came for Me”; it consists of the government’s photographs of the Japanese internment camps, which were put into place soon after the Pearl Harbor attack. And second, I watched the sixth episode of Ken Burns documentary about the Vietnam War called “Things Fall Apart”; it covers the first half of 1968, significant for the Tet offensive. It is curious that both titles are based on poems.

“Then They Came for Me” is from a speech written by Martin Neimöller, a Protestant pastor who spent seven years in a Nazi concentration camp due to his failure to keep quiet about his opposition to Hitler. The poem, as only poems can do, succinctly remarks on the silence the systematic disappearance of one group after another was met with, including his own disappearance.

William Butler Yeats, one of the 20th centuries most famous poets who was active in Irish politics, wrote “The Second Coming” in 1919 with WW I, the Russian Revolution, and Irish political tumult in mind. It is from the third line that “Things Fall Apart” is drawn. The poem paints a stunning and disturbing image of how he perceived the world around him. It is difficult to fathom the complexity of his imagery.

One poem is a simple statement of fact; the other is woven with biblical references. Both leave me heartsick and wondering about how I would react if I found myself in either situation, on either side. Would I go quietly . . . would I give or follow orders . . . would I have the courage of convictions or the complicity of a coward.

These questions are impossible to answer. Life is made up of chance, and if things turn out well it is considered luck and if not, misfortune. I do have the free will to make decisions, but if they come to get me or things fall apart will I ever have a chance.

As an example, my Viet Nam era draft lottery number was in the high two hundreds. It was my get out of jail card. Luck had intervened on my behalf. I relaxed and got on with my life, but now watching the war’s carnage unfold on LEDs rather than a cathode ray tube I wonder if I could or should have done more to protest.

In 2006, I was asked to participate in the Field Museum’s Cultural Connections Program called Connecting Cultures Through Kimono and Sari (http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2006/11/18/voices-of-chicago/).
A male was needed to demonstrate the intricacies of wearing a kimono. Because of my involvement with Chado, the Way of Tea, I have many occasions to wear kimono, so that made sense. I respectfully played my role but after all these years, I still feel uncomfortable with the historical circumstances that lead to me being asked.

As part of the program, the Chicago Japanese American Historical Society requested that I write an article describing the event. In doing the research for the article, I was confronted by the harm the forcible incarceration of over 100,000 Japanese Americans had caused. I was shocked by my unfamiliarity with the extent of this tragedy.

The exhibit and documentary, no matter how painful, bring long hidden communities out into the open. The arresting images force an internal dialog, which is why I think both titles were derived from poems. What better medium to cut through the ambiguity, and that is truly momentous.

October 2017