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They Never Asked: Senryu Poetry from the WWII Portland Assembly Center
In 1942, after Executive Order 9066 was issued, Japanese American families were removed from their homes in Oregon and the Yakima Valley and sent to the Portland International Livestock Exposition Center, where they were housed in converted animal stalls. The Wartime Civil Control Administration forcibly held these Japanese Americans at the Portland Assembly Center until September 1942, when they were transferred to newly built permanent incarceration camps at Minidoka, Heart Mountain, and Tule Lake.
The Japanese American communities in Oregon and southern Washington were relatively small and many of the detainees knew each other; they drew on existing family and community networks to help each other through the long summer, living in inhumane conditions under the constant threat of violence. Several members of Bara Ginsha, a Portland poetry group, decided to continue their work while imprisoned at the center, primarily by writing senryū, a type of Japanese poetry related to haiku. They Never Asked is a collection of work produced by Bara Ginsha members in the WCCA camp, based on a journal kept by Masaki Kinoshita. The senryū collected here were written by a group of twenty-two poets, who produced hundreds of poems. Individually, the poems reflect the thoughts and feelings the authors experienced while being detained in the center; collectively, they reflect the resilience and resistance of a community denied freedom. Editors Shelley Baker-Gard, Michael Freiling, and Satsuki Takikawa present translations of the poems alongside the originals, supplemented by historical and literary context and a foreword by Duane Watari, Masaki Kinoshita’s grandson.
The Japanese American communities in Oregon and southern Washington were relatively small and many of the detainees knew each other; they drew on existing family and community networks to help each other through the long summer, living in inhumane conditions under the constant threat of violence. Several members of Bara Ginsha, a Portland poetry group, decided to continue their work while imprisoned at the center, primarily by writing senryū, a type of Japanese poetry related to haiku. They Never Asked is a collection of work produced by Bara Ginsha members in the WCCA camp, based on a journal kept by Masaki Kinoshita. The senryū collected here were written by a group of twenty-two poets, who produced hundreds of poems. Individually, the poems reflect the thoughts and feelings the authors experienced while being detained in the center; collectively, they reflect the resilience and resistance of a community denied freedom. Editors Shelley Baker-Gard, Michael Freiling, and Satsuki Takikawa present translations of the poems alongside the originals, supplemented by historical and literary context and a foreword by Duane Watari, Masaki Kinoshita’s grandson.
- GenresPoetryNonfiction
185 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 10, 2025
An anthology of senryū poetry written in spring and summer of 1942 by Japanese Americans held captive at the WCCA Assembly Center in North Portland, Oregon. Senryū shares haiku's 5-7-5 sound unit form, but deals more directly with the business of being human, whereas haiku's focus is on nature and only tangentially references, or implies, human emotions.
The WCCA is the Wartime Civilian Control Administration, the government body set up to implement the mass forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. From the Densho Encyclopedia: "In addition to engineering the logistics of removing some 110,000 people from their homes and businesses in a short period of time, the WCCA also quickly built and administered a series of seventeen temporary detention camps to hold those who had been removed through the spring and summer of 1942, before overseeing their transfer to more permanent camps administered by the War Relocation Authority by the end of fall 1942." In North Portland, the temporary facility was previously the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Center, the horse stalls converted into living spaces for those detained there.
This book has a thoughtful design and a conscientious attempt to put this poetry—and the people who wrote it—into context, providing historical background and examining the cultural relevance of poetry in Japanese communities, including an exploration of the individual poets incarcerated at the camps as well as the poetry groups held at WCCA camps, and an explanation of the form itself. The book has several introductory pieces, an afterword, two essays on haiku/senryū, a timeline of relevant events, end notes for references, a full bibliography, and biographies of the poets. The one thing it doesn't have is an index, which I found myself wanting multiple times over the six months it took me to read this.
The poems are presented with the Japanese script given prominence in a bold vertical line down the center of the page, one poem per page, and then a transliteration of the Japanese and, finally, the poem translated into English, in three lines. Each poem has a footnote with a "literal" translation and any translation notes, including occasions where kanji have been simplified since the writing of the poem, or instances where the poet (or transcriber) seems to have made an error. However, the literal translations are anything but. They're of a more conversational nature than the actual choppy bits of language you usually get when Japanese is translated literally into English, and in some cases, I found them more interesting or nuanced than the final translations, which could feel a little melodramatic at times. But it's entirely possible that's just my bias for haiku showing up. Here's a poem by Jōnan that really struck me because of the way it mimics a common structure in haiku and through that offers an extreme understatement of human misery:
even autumn
comes on command here—
assembly center
This book was published in 2023 by Oregon State University Press, and I checked it out of the Multnomah County Library.
The WCCA is the Wartime Civilian Control Administration, the government body set up to implement the mass forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. From the Densho Encyclopedia: "In addition to engineering the logistics of removing some 110,000 people from their homes and businesses in a short period of time, the WCCA also quickly built and administered a series of seventeen temporary detention camps to hold those who had been removed through the spring and summer of 1942, before overseeing their transfer to more permanent camps administered by the War Relocation Authority by the end of fall 1942." In North Portland, the temporary facility was previously the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Center, the horse stalls converted into living spaces for those detained there.
This book has a thoughtful design and a conscientious attempt to put this poetry—and the people who wrote it—into context, providing historical background and examining the cultural relevance of poetry in Japanese communities, including an exploration of the individual poets incarcerated at the camps as well as the poetry groups held at WCCA camps, and an explanation of the form itself. The book has several introductory pieces, an afterword, two essays on haiku/senryū, a timeline of relevant events, end notes for references, a full bibliography, and biographies of the poets. The one thing it doesn't have is an index, which I found myself wanting multiple times over the six months it took me to read this.
The poems are presented with the Japanese script given prominence in a bold vertical line down the center of the page, one poem per page, and then a transliteration of the Japanese and, finally, the poem translated into English, in three lines. Each poem has a footnote with a "literal" translation and any translation notes, including occasions where kanji have been simplified since the writing of the poem, or instances where the poet (or transcriber) seems to have made an error. However, the literal translations are anything but. They're of a more conversational nature than the actual choppy bits of language you usually get when Japanese is translated literally into English, and in some cases, I found them more interesting or nuanced than the final translations, which could feel a little melodramatic at times. But it's entirely possible that's just my bias for haiku showing up. Here's a poem by Jōnan that really struck me because of the way it mimics a common structure in haiku and through that offers an extreme understatement of human misery:
even autumn
comes on command here—
assembly center
This book was published in 2023 by Oregon State University Press, and I checked it out of the Multnomah County Library.
August 14, 2023
I am not sure when I first learned about the incarceration of Japanese people, citizen and non-citizen alike, during WWII. However, I have become much more informed upon moving to Portland. The poetry in this book comes from a journal kept by Watari's grandfather that recorded senryu of his own and others. People survive, and one way these did was to try to make normal life out of very trying circumstances (inadequate space; no walls or doors, only stalls; smells of the animals that lived there before them). One normal thing to do was to have senryu clubs and write together.
The explanatory text includes some social history of race relations in a Timeline that presents more discriminatory acts and laws than I'd been aware of. There is also mention of several births during the few months the people "assembled" at what is now the Expo Center awaiting the completion of the "camps" where they would be imprisoned throughout WWII. That there would be births in such trying circumstances had never occurred to me, and yet there would be no way to control timing. Another new awareness: as the people heard of the treatments of the Jews by the Nazis, they worried that perhaps they were in for the same--a degree of fear added to the insult that I'd not considered before.
The explanatory text also includes an overview of Japanese poetry, focusing on haiku and the closely related senryu, notes on translation, and what biography of the writers could be found.
The history and overview are brief, but here is a bibliography for readers who want to learn more.
The explanatory text includes some social history of race relations in a Timeline that presents more discriminatory acts and laws than I'd been aware of. There is also mention of several births during the few months the people "assembled" at what is now the Expo Center awaiting the completion of the "camps" where they would be imprisoned throughout WWII. That there would be births in such trying circumstances had never occurred to me, and yet there would be no way to control timing. Another new awareness: as the people heard of the treatments of the Jews by the Nazis, they worried that perhaps they were in for the same--a degree of fear added to the insult that I'd not considered before.
The explanatory text also includes an overview of Japanese poetry, focusing on haiku and the closely related senryu, notes on translation, and what biography of the writers could be found.
The history and overview are brief, but here is a bibliography for readers who want to learn more.
April 5, 2026
They Never Asked: Senryu Poetry from the WWII Portland Assembly Center is yet another collection of short-form Japanese-American poetry that almost succeeds at being great but falls short in one of the most important areas: the poetry translation.
Similar to Violet Kazue de Cristoforo's May Sky: There is Always Tomorrow, which collected various poems by kaiko haiku (free-form haiku) poets from various Japanese concentration camps, this collection gathers poems from the senryu community that formed in the titular Portland Assembly Center. And, just like that earlier anthology, this is an excellent resource and historical document of a particular time, place, and literary movement that fails to effectively communicate the poems themselves to the English-speaking audience.
First off, I want to praise the efforts of those involved, especially for their detailed research. The introduction provides an easy-to-read look at the history of haiku and senryu, the Japanese-American haiku and senryu movements in early 20th century America, and the tragic history of Japanese internment. It historicizes the works in the volume, makes connections to other texts, and includes helpful photographs and notes about everything. As a textbook, this is compelling work.
The translations of the poems, however, are another matter. Most of them read awkwardly, losing the naturalness of modern senryu in their klunky makeovers. The translators occasionally add wording not present in the original poems, or reword the poems in unconvincing ways. And in the worst cases, the translation is actually wrong and changes the meaning of the poem entirely.
Take this entry, for example:
heiwa made aenu shashin no ko to kataru --Goichi
First of all, the poem SHOULD read something like this:
talking to my child
in the photo, whom I can't see
until there's peace
OR (perhaps, more loosely):
until peacetime
I'll talk with the photo of the child
I cannot see
--Goichi
(Note: The poem very literally reads "(I) talk with child in photo that (I) can't see until peace"
But this is how the poem is rendered in the book:
only this photo can hold
the child we talk about--
until peace comes
This is simply a misreading of the original poem's meaning, and it loses the poetry of the original, in which a parent consoles himself by talking to a photograph in his child's absence. He is able to talk to his child only through this memento, bridging the distance in his mind the best he can. But the version in the book adds this strange element -- "only this photo can hold / the child" -- and changes the photographed individual into someone that others "talk about," completely losing the immediacy of the original work.
That may be the most egregious example, but many other translations just read as awkward renditions of the original text and could have easily been molded into stronger and more faithful versions of the original texts. For instance:
my father's
happy drunken song
no longer heard
--Jonan
This gets across the information, but the English ends in this weak, passive way ("no longer heard"), unlike the original poem, which closes with the object of the line, the father's song:
mou kikenu yotta kigen no chichi no uta
(I) no longer can hear my father's drunken, cheerful song
no longer
can I hear my father's
happy drinking song
OR:
no longer can I hear
the cheerful tune that Father sang
when he was drunk
A large number of these translations could easily be improved, and the fact that they read as sloppy as they do is surprising considering the amount of care given to the rest of the book. They made a book about poetry but missed most of the poetry itself. More examples to close this out:
kaki no soto moyuru NEON ga me ni shimiru --Jonan
neon glowing outside of (the) fence stings (my) eyes
beyond the barbed wire
a glow of neon lights
stinging my eyes
Notice how some of these don't need much work to read more fluidly:
the neon glow
beyond the barbed-wire fence
stings my eyes
--Jonan
shuutome no fu ni ochinu wa yome no ikujiho --Jonan
mother-in-law's inability to understand daughter-in-law's parenting methods
with eyebrows up
mother-in-law watches
how she raises them
My problem with this one is how interpretive the translation goes ("with eyebrows up" she "watches"), when it's really unnecessary:
her mother-in-law
just can't understand the way
she raises the kids
OR:
her mother-in-law
simply cannot understand
her parenting style
--Jonan
mufunbetsu komaru wa kazoku dake de nashi --Jonan
indiscretion causes problems not only for the family
trouble maker
for family and beyond--
such indiscretion
So, first of all, look at the literal translation above and then the interpretation they went with in the book. What is with the strange cut separating "such indiscretion" at the bottom of the poem, when that's the word that starts the poem in the original language? What's with this "trouble maker" that is implied by the poem -- why does it need to be put into words here? Why not just take it for what it already is, like this:
indiscretion
causes problems, not just
for the family
OR:
it isn't just your family
who's bothered
by your thoughtlessness
--Jonan
Either of these would read much more naturally and would more honestly reflect the original.
yubi wo suu kuse mo natsukashi osanai hi --Jonan
sucking finger habit is also nostalgic childhood days
toddler's habit
security from a thumb--
easy for them
Another example of the translator bringing in language from left field and completely rewriting the poem in a strange way. It reads more closely as:
I even miss
sucking my thumb, those habits
of childhood
--Jonan
man'ichi no kakugo wo shiro to tsuma he dake --Jonan
prepare for the worst, (I tell) only my wife
if the worst happens
resolve to persevere--
whispered to my wife
Another far too wordy attempt at translation when the original transliteration mostly suffices:
I tell only my wife
to prepare
for the worst
--Jonan
kakugo shiteinagara moshiya ni nozomi mochi --Hikari
while (I am) prepared/resigned (for something bad), (I) hold on to possibility with hope
it is resolved
I accept what will be!
holding on to hope
Another odd reading, and the notes confirm some misunderstanding of the Japanese (the book claims that the "ya" here is exclamatory, but it is part of the word "moshiya," meaning chance or possibility).
while I am resolved,
I hold out hope
for some faint chance
--Hikari
tomo ni shinu kakugo shisenri koko he kita --Shousui
resolved to die together, (I) came 4,000-ri (to get) here
to live with you
a ten-thousand-mile trip
resigned to die with you
This is the last time I'll say this, but here is yet another example of a translation that adds too much to the original language, spoiling its inherent quality. One good choice it does make, however, is to change the distance 4,000-ri to the more easily understood 10,000 miles.
resolved to die together,
I came ten thousand miles
to be here
OR:
I have come
ten thousand miles, prepared
to die with you
--Shousui
I wish these books would work more on the translations of the actual poetry that they claim to be all about. They are such good resources aside from the poetry, which they muddle about with, ruining all the things that make it poetry in the first place. Immediacy is lost. The natural quality is lost. And if you lose the poetry in a poetry book, then something has gone terribly wrong.
I am still giving this book four stars, but those are for the rest of the information contained within, and for providing the poems in the original language so that people can truly enjoy the poetry and not have to rely on these haphazard English renditions that fail the original poets over and over again.
Similar to Violet Kazue de Cristoforo's May Sky: There is Always Tomorrow, which collected various poems by kaiko haiku (free-form haiku) poets from various Japanese concentration camps, this collection gathers poems from the senryu community that formed in the titular Portland Assembly Center. And, just like that earlier anthology, this is an excellent resource and historical document of a particular time, place, and literary movement that fails to effectively communicate the poems themselves to the English-speaking audience.
First off, I want to praise the efforts of those involved, especially for their detailed research. The introduction provides an easy-to-read look at the history of haiku and senryu, the Japanese-American haiku and senryu movements in early 20th century America, and the tragic history of Japanese internment. It historicizes the works in the volume, makes connections to other texts, and includes helpful photographs and notes about everything. As a textbook, this is compelling work.
The translations of the poems, however, are another matter. Most of them read awkwardly, losing the naturalness of modern senryu in their klunky makeovers. The translators occasionally add wording not present in the original poems, or reword the poems in unconvincing ways. And in the worst cases, the translation is actually wrong and changes the meaning of the poem entirely.
Take this entry, for example:
heiwa made aenu shashin no ko to kataru --Goichi
First of all, the poem SHOULD read something like this:
talking to my child
in the photo, whom I can't see
until there's peace
OR (perhaps, more loosely):
until peacetime
I'll talk with the photo of the child
I cannot see
--Goichi
(Note: The poem very literally reads "(I) talk with child in photo that (I) can't see until peace"
But this is how the poem is rendered in the book:
only this photo can hold
the child we talk about--
until peace comes
This is simply a misreading of the original poem's meaning, and it loses the poetry of the original, in which a parent consoles himself by talking to a photograph in his child's absence. He is able to talk to his child only through this memento, bridging the distance in his mind the best he can. But the version in the book adds this strange element -- "only this photo can hold / the child" -- and changes the photographed individual into someone that others "talk about," completely losing the immediacy of the original work.
That may be the most egregious example, but many other translations just read as awkward renditions of the original text and could have easily been molded into stronger and more faithful versions of the original texts. For instance:
my father's
happy drunken song
no longer heard
--Jonan
This gets across the information, but the English ends in this weak, passive way ("no longer heard"), unlike the original poem, which closes with the object of the line, the father's song:
mou kikenu yotta kigen no chichi no uta
(I) no longer can hear my father's drunken, cheerful song
no longer
can I hear my father's
happy drinking song
OR:
no longer can I hear
the cheerful tune that Father sang
when he was drunk
A large number of these translations could easily be improved, and the fact that they read as sloppy as they do is surprising considering the amount of care given to the rest of the book. They made a book about poetry but missed most of the poetry itself. More examples to close this out:
kaki no soto moyuru NEON ga me ni shimiru --Jonan
neon glowing outside of (the) fence stings (my) eyes
beyond the barbed wire
a glow of neon lights
stinging my eyes
Notice how some of these don't need much work to read more fluidly:
the neon glow
beyond the barbed-wire fence
stings my eyes
--Jonan
shuutome no fu ni ochinu wa yome no ikujiho --Jonan
mother-in-law's inability to understand daughter-in-law's parenting methods
with eyebrows up
mother-in-law watches
how she raises them
My problem with this one is how interpretive the translation goes ("with eyebrows up" she "watches"), when it's really unnecessary:
her mother-in-law
just can't understand the way
she raises the kids
OR:
her mother-in-law
simply cannot understand
her parenting style
--Jonan
mufunbetsu komaru wa kazoku dake de nashi --Jonan
indiscretion causes problems not only for the family
trouble maker
for family and beyond--
such indiscretion
So, first of all, look at the literal translation above and then the interpretation they went with in the book. What is with the strange cut separating "such indiscretion" at the bottom of the poem, when that's the word that starts the poem in the original language? What's with this "trouble maker" that is implied by the poem -- why does it need to be put into words here? Why not just take it for what it already is, like this:
indiscretion
causes problems, not just
for the family
OR:
it isn't just your family
who's bothered
by your thoughtlessness
--Jonan
Either of these would read much more naturally and would more honestly reflect the original.
yubi wo suu kuse mo natsukashi osanai hi --Jonan
sucking finger habit is also nostalgic childhood days
toddler's habit
security from a thumb--
easy for them
Another example of the translator bringing in language from left field and completely rewriting the poem in a strange way. It reads more closely as:
I even miss
sucking my thumb, those habits
of childhood
--Jonan
man'ichi no kakugo wo shiro to tsuma he dake --Jonan
prepare for the worst, (I tell) only my wife
if the worst happens
resolve to persevere--
whispered to my wife
Another far too wordy attempt at translation when the original transliteration mostly suffices:
I tell only my wife
to prepare
for the worst
--Jonan
kakugo shiteinagara moshiya ni nozomi mochi --Hikari
while (I am) prepared/resigned (for something bad), (I) hold on to possibility with hope
it is resolved
I accept what will be!
holding on to hope
Another odd reading, and the notes confirm some misunderstanding of the Japanese (the book claims that the "ya" here is exclamatory, but it is part of the word "moshiya," meaning chance or possibility).
while I am resolved,
I hold out hope
for some faint chance
--Hikari
tomo ni shinu kakugo shisenri koko he kita --Shousui
resolved to die together, (I) came 4,000-ri (to get) here
to live with you
a ten-thousand-mile trip
resigned to die with you
This is the last time I'll say this, but here is yet another example of a translation that adds too much to the original language, spoiling its inherent quality. One good choice it does make, however, is to change the distance 4,000-ri to the more easily understood 10,000 miles.
resolved to die together,
I came ten thousand miles
to be here
OR:
I have come
ten thousand miles, prepared
to die with you
--Shousui
I wish these books would work more on the translations of the actual poetry that they claim to be all about. They are such good resources aside from the poetry, which they muddle about with, ruining all the things that make it poetry in the first place. Immediacy is lost. The natural quality is lost. And if you lose the poetry in a poetry book, then something has gone terribly wrong.
I am still giving this book four stars, but those are for the rest of the information contained within, and for providing the poems in the original language so that people can truly enjoy the poetry and not have to rely on these haphazard English renditions that fail the original poets over and over again.
June 15, 2023
When Duane Watari found a stash of old papers in his grandmother's Portland home, he had little idea of their significance, although he knew they belonged to his grandfather, noted poet Masaki Kinoshita. Seeking the advice of local experts in the Japanese language, and haiku specifically, the import of his discovery soon became apparent. These were long-forgotten poems, in the senryu style, written by the residents of the Wartime Civil Control Administration's holding camp. The poems were created during the summer of 1942, by residents dealing with the stress of awaiting shipment to other camps throughout the West. The documents were a literary time-capsule offering a brief, piercing glimpse into a unique yet painful episode of America's past.
The historical summaries within the text of They Never Asked, bookend the poetry itself, and include bios of important figures in the Japanese cultural scene prior to WWII, notably Kinoshita. They also conclude with an overview of the state of haiku poetry in the U.S. But primarily, editor Baker-Gard clearly and concisely details the historical context of the circumstances that led to the creation of this poetry collection.
Translators Michael Freiling and Satsuki Takikawa worked painstakingly to transcribe the works into literal translations, while also providing English approximations of the original sense. I found this arrangement to be particularly fascinating, as comparison of both versions reminds the reader how challenging it is to convey the subtleties between two such radically different languages.
The results of their efforts is like blowing dust off the pages of an eighty-year-old newspaper, and seeing afresh the lives and emotions captured in the yellow, crumbling text and faded photos. Since senryu differs from haiku in that it focuses more on capturing a fleeting yet universal human emotion, instead of dispassionately painting a nature scene, nearly all of these works exude a level of poignancy that connects immediately with the reader.
Despite its depth and thoroughness, the book is a quick, easy read. It's also a beautiful and valuable monument located at the often tricky nexus between history and art, reminding us in a particularly fresh and startling way of the deeply human experiences of Japanese Americans during a time of great crisis and uncertainty.
The historical summaries within the text of They Never Asked, bookend the poetry itself, and include bios of important figures in the Japanese cultural scene prior to WWII, notably Kinoshita. They also conclude with an overview of the state of haiku poetry in the U.S. But primarily, editor Baker-Gard clearly and concisely details the historical context of the circumstances that led to the creation of this poetry collection.
Translators Michael Freiling and Satsuki Takikawa worked painstakingly to transcribe the works into literal translations, while also providing English approximations of the original sense. I found this arrangement to be particularly fascinating, as comparison of both versions reminds the reader how challenging it is to convey the subtleties between two such radically different languages.
The results of their efforts is like blowing dust off the pages of an eighty-year-old newspaper, and seeing afresh the lives and emotions captured in the yellow, crumbling text and faded photos. Since senryu differs from haiku in that it focuses more on capturing a fleeting yet universal human emotion, instead of dispassionately painting a nature scene, nearly all of these works exude a level of poignancy that connects immediately with the reader.
Despite its depth and thoroughness, the book is a quick, easy read. It's also a beautiful and valuable monument located at the often tricky nexus between history and art, reminding us in a particularly fresh and startling way of the deeply human experiences of Japanese Americans during a time of great crisis and uncertainty.
May 23, 2026
As one of the editors of Prune Juice, one of the longest-running senryu journals in the English language, I am very interested in the question of what senryu is in English, and how that connects to and intersects with the Japanese lineage of the form. The work of senryuists in the anglophone diaspora is an essential connection between the Japanese and anglophone world of poets, and the work of these poets is instructive.
They Never Asked is also a document charting the resilience of Japanese Americans interned in camps during WW2, a situation that bears striking resemblance to the actions of ICE in the current moment. This is a collection of poetry created by prisoners during their stay at the Portland Assembly Center. Speaking and writing in Japanese was often forbidden at these centers, so the practice of writing and sharing senryu in Japanese was an act of resistance.
The poems in the volume were created during meetings of the camp's senryu club, where they wrote responses to topics given by leaders, from which the best poems were selected. The poems span memories of life before internment, life during internment, and meditations on the human condition. Senryu is often thought of as the more humanistic or populist side of poetry, as opposed to haiku, which tends to focus on the natural and ephemeral.
This is discussed in the introductions to the text, which provide historical and literary context-- we have this collection due to Duane Watari, whose grandfather, Masaki Kinoshita, was a prolific senryu poet, as well as the work of multiple scholars. The poems, translated by Shelley Baker-Gard, Michael Freiling, and Satsuki Takikawa, appear in kanji, romanji, as well as English, and the collection ends with an essay by Fay Aoyagi about first-person experience in War Haiku.
They Never Asked is also a document charting the resilience of Japanese Americans interned in camps during WW2, a situation that bears striking resemblance to the actions of ICE in the current moment. This is a collection of poetry created by prisoners during their stay at the Portland Assembly Center. Speaking and writing in Japanese was often forbidden at these centers, so the practice of writing and sharing senryu in Japanese was an act of resistance.
The poems in the volume were created during meetings of the camp's senryu club, where they wrote responses to topics given by leaders, from which the best poems were selected. The poems span memories of life before internment, life during internment, and meditations on the human condition. Senryu is often thought of as the more humanistic or populist side of poetry, as opposed to haiku, which tends to focus on the natural and ephemeral.
This is discussed in the introductions to the text, which provide historical and literary context-- we have this collection due to Duane Watari, whose grandfather, Masaki Kinoshita, was a prolific senryu poet, as well as the work of multiple scholars. The poems, translated by Shelley Baker-Gard, Michael Freiling, and Satsuki Takikawa, appear in kanji, romanji, as well as English, and the collection ends with an essay by Fay Aoyagi about first-person experience in War Haiku.
September 16, 2025
They Never Asked is an anthology of 67 senryū by Japanese Americans in Oregon and the Yakima Valley who were removed from their homes and imprisoned in the Portland Assembly Center until September 1942 when they were transferred to incarceration camps after the issue of Executive Order 9066. The Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) forcibly held Japanese Americans in the Portland Assembly Center. Many were part of a Portland poetry group called Bara Ginsha and continued to write senryū to help cope with the realities they were facing. This anthology provides a real glimpse into what life was like during this time based on the journal kept by Masaki Kinoshita. The community of the Japanese American people showed true strength and resilience during these times of imprisonment, and this comes through some of the senryū.
The poems in this anthology also reveal other areas of life, including community activities that took place (such as baseball games and Sumo wrestling demonstrations), yet the harsher realities take precedence in the senryū. This book also includes 29 black and white illustrations, many of which are photographs that provide even more of a glimpse into what life was like.
They Never Asked is a publication that I feel should belong in every history class. This anthology reveals a part of history that perhaps some people are not aware of or know very little about. Despite the harsh conditions, I feel this book shows the resilience of the dynamic human spirit. I express gratitude to everyone who made this anthology possible and am grateful to all who continue to stand up to injustices today. I highly recommend this book.
The poems in this anthology also reveal other areas of life, including community activities that took place (such as baseball games and Sumo wrestling demonstrations), yet the harsher realities take precedence in the senryū. This book also includes 29 black and white illustrations, many of which are photographs that provide even more of a glimpse into what life was like.
They Never Asked is a publication that I feel should belong in every history class. This anthology reveals a part of history that perhaps some people are not aware of or know very little about. Despite the harsh conditions, I feel this book shows the resilience of the dynamic human spirit. I express gratitude to everyone who made this anthology possible and am grateful to all who continue to stand up to injustices today. I highly recommend this book.
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