My first role model was my father, Kiyoshi. For all that I have tried not to be like him, we are similar in many ways. He used his fists when angry and was an amateur boxer when young. Instead of fists, I fight with words and sharp remarks. Anger is our bond that we share. The betrayal by the government consumed him and burdens me to this day.

Before the war, Dad owned and operated Elk Grocery Store on Seneca Street in Seattle, Washington. After the Pearl Harbor attack, his white customers stopped their patronage. Some came to say goodbye, and others who had traded with him for years simply passed by without a word. A few months later, in 1942, when my mother was one month pregnant, the government gave my family a week to pack and leave their home. They could take only what they could carry.

He had difficulty accepting the fact that there were two Americas, and he lived in the one with less justice.

The story Dad never told, however, was that after being born in Goldbar, Washington, his family returned to Hiroshima for several years. He was ten years old and living in Hiroshima when his mother went on a “shopping trip” to Kobe. What she actually did was leave him and his sister with an aunt in Hiroshima for three years, while she joined her husband in America. Being abandoned by his mother was a traumatic event for Dad. Those same feelings of powerlessness were rekindled when the government incarcerated him. He had difficulty accepting the fact that there were two Americas, and he lived in the one with less justice. As much as he wanted to fight someone or something, it was futile.

Larry Matsuda
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Since cameras were confiscated before the internment, only two small black and white photographs exist of me in the relocation camp. In one photo, my mother cradles and protects me as she smiles in front of a tar paper barrack. She wears a white knitted sweater with cable stitches. My eyes peek over a wrap of wool folds. I sport a bald head and a toothless grin. If one did not know that the photo was taken in camp, it looked as if it were taken in an average rural setting. Everything appeared normal: a smiling mother, a baby in her arms, a clear sky, and clothes on the line. Looking at that picture now, I cannot imagine my parents waking up every morning in jail with their extended family and friends in the desert. In the barrack apartments, which were separated by nothing more than a sheet, each day would begin with visits to the latrines and the mess hall. All their activities took place in an area surrounded by barbed wire, as soldiers and machine guns pointed in at them.

After the war, my mother’s camp memories would be triggered randomly. She would say, “We had a wonderful grand piano.” That remark would be followed by “But we lost it in the evacuation.” “Lost” meant that they could not sell it before the internment, and when they returned, it was gone. I heard these stories at every family gathering: weddings, funerals, birthdays, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, and Christmas. Consciously and subconsciously, I absorbed these messages and emotions.

Because I was a baby and could not remember our incarceration, some people discount my experience as if it were not authentic. In response I always reply, “I remember a lot.” My poem entitled “Too Young to Remember” from my book A Cold Wind from Idaho, reads in part as follows: