They Never Asked: Senryu Poetry from the WWII Portland Assembly Center

by Duane Watari (Foreword), Shelley Baker-Gard (Translator), Michael Freiling (Translator)

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.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

185 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2023

Reviews

[Punk · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[S. Pierzchala · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jacob D. Salzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.