(My father came from Japan in 1905
He was fifteen when he immigrated from Japan
He,
he... he worked until he was able to buy - to actually build a store.)
Let me tell you the story in the form
of a dream
I don't know why I have to tell it but I know what it means
Close your eyes and just picture the scene,
as I paint it for you
It was World War II when this man named Kenji woke up
Ken was not a soldier, he was just
a man with a family
Who owned a store
In LA, that day
He crawled out of bed like he always did
Bacon and eggs with wife and kids, he lived on
the
Second floor of a little store he ran
He moved to LA from Japan
They called him 'Immigrant',
in Japanese
He'd say he was called 'Iisei', that meant
'First Generation In The United States' when
Everybody was afraid of the Germans, afraid of the 'Japs'
But most of all afraid of a homeland
attack
And that morning when Ken went out on the doormat
His world went black 'cause
Right there, front page news
Three
weeks before 1942
"Pearl Harbour's Been Bombed And The Japs Are Coming"
Pictures of soldiers dying and running
Ken
knew what it would lead to
And just like he guessed, the President said
"The evil Japanese in our home country will
be locked away"
They gave Ken a couple of days
To get his whole life packed in two bags
Just two bags
He couldn't even pack his clothes
And some folks didn't even have a suitcase
To pack anything in
So two trash bags was all they gave them
And when the kids asked
mom "Where are we going?"
Nobody even knew what to say to them
Ken didn't want to lie
He said "The US is looking for spies,
So we have to live in a place called Manzanar,
Where
a lot of Japanese people are"
Stop it, don't look at the gunmen
You don't wanna get the soldiers wondering
If you're
gonna run or not, 'cause if you run then you might get shot
Other than that, try not to think about it
Try not to worry
'bout it being so crowded
'Cause someday we'll get out, someday, someday...
(Yeah, soon as war broke out, the
F.B.I. came and...they just come to the house and: "You have to come. All the Japanese have to go.". They took Mr. Ni, the
people couldn't understand, why did they have to take him? Because he's just an innocent laborer...)
So now they're
in a town with soldiers surrounding them
Every day, every night, looked down at them
From watchtowers up on the wall
Ken
couldn't really hate them at all
They were just doin' their job and
He wasn't gonna make any problems
He had a little
garden with vegetables and fruits that he gave to the troops
In a basket his wife made
But in the back of his mind, he wanted his family's life saved,
Prisoners
of war in their own damn country
What for?
And time passed in the prison town, he wondered
If he'd live it down if and when they were free
The only way out was joining the army,
and supposedly
Some men went out for the army, signed on
And ended up flying to Japan with a bomb
That
15 kiloton blast put an end to the war pretty fast
Two cities were blown to bits
The end of the war came quick
And Ken got out
Big hopes of a normal life with his kids and his wife, but
Then they got back to their home, and
What they saw made him feel so alone
These people had trashed every
room
Smashed in the windows and bashed in the doors
Written on the walls and the floor:
"Japs not welcome anymore"
And
Kenji dropped both of his bags at his sides and just stood outside
He looked at his wife without words to say
She looked
back at him wiping the tears away
And, said "Someday we'll be okay, someday"
Now the names have been changed, but the
story's true
My family was locked up back in '42
My family was there
Where it was dark and damp
And they called it an 'internment camp'
(When we first
got back from camp... uhh, it was... pretty... pretty bad...)
(I, I remember, my husband said: "Are we gonna stay 'til
last?". Then my husband died before they closed the camp.)
