Moonlight

by Henry Sadaji Sugaya

The following poem was written by Henry Sadaji Sugaya, an Issei from Chiba Prefecture who settled in San Francisco and the South Peninsula before being incarcerated in Tanforan and Topaz from 1942-1945.

In the forty-second year of Nineteen Hundred,
U.S. and Japan severed their friendship, and
Martial laws were laid strict and harsh;
All of us were tied to our homes, and
As the blackout siren shrilled through the night,
We were herded aliens and citizens all,
To the racetrack at Tanforan.

The stench of manure numbed the senses
Of 20,000 countrymen huddled together.
As the war clouds deepened in the Autumn sky,
All were driven from the coastal zone
To the State of Utah so far away.

As we collected ourselves in the barracks assigned,
Barbed wire fences surrounded us all, and
Sentries stood guard with bayonetted guns,
Tightening the security to an unneeded extreme.
Alas, as far as the eye could reach,
The land was covered with nothing but sage.

The camp was barren with neither grass nor tree,
Myriad years of mystery wrapped in the desolate land.
An army cot and a broom just two,
No other furniture to make a home.
Rows and rows of barrack-like dwellings;
Whirling wind stirring sand and dust.

In the languishing heat both old and young
Breathing hopelessly and hard with no place to go.

Then sudden strike of storm and thunder,
The hardened clay now soft and curling
Like thick soup of azuki beans, and
Hampering people’s walk outside.

The late summer sun striking mess hall hot,
The burning stove adding to the heat,
How I loathed cooking frozen viscera of cows and pigs.

With streaming sweat running through the body,
Even native Indians find life hard to bear, and
We must tolerate this wretched life.