Issei Buddhism in the Americas

IV. Patriotism and War

Part 4 Patriotism and War If a central concern of Issei Buddhism was to help first-generation immigrants and their children in the Americas negotiate the difficulties of labor, language, and a culture hostile to them, the period after Pearl Harbor was one of the most trying of circumstances. Although much has been written on the incarceration experience of roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, very little has touched on the interior life of the internees nor on the role of religion in times of war and crisis. The two chapters in this section highlight the role of faith among internees as well as those in Hawaii (which was under martial law), but through very different source materials. Keiko Wells brings to light the “song culture” among Japanese Americans in Hawaii, especially those composed during the war to grieve those Nisei who had been killed in combat after they had volunteered (or were later drafted) for service in the military, both in the European theater (as part of the famous 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team) or the Pacific theater (as part of the Military Intelligence Service). Akihiro Yamakura, on the other hand, draws on a previously unpublished wartime internment diary of the Bishop of Tenrikyo (a so-called new religious movement that was classified during the war as “Shintō”—though having both Buddhist and Shintō elements as part of this “new religion”) to paint a picture of a Issei minister with pro-Japanese sensibilities. Keiko Wells’s study of Buddhist song cultures in Hawaii begins with its composition and singing in the context of labor songs on 136 part 4 the plantations and songs of nostalgia for migrants, but extends to a detailed examination of Buddhist songwriters who, both prior to the war and during it, sang extensively through Buddhist motifs. Wells, a specialist in American folksongs and culture and someone who has previously written on black spirituals and other kinds of religious music, reveals how Buddhist song transmission and song making in the 1930s to 1950s, participated in a local Hawaiian religious and cultural framework. She suggests that this song culture was a mixture of Japanese folksongs, Buddhist sutra chanting, and Western music traditions (especially as seen in Ernest Hunt’s 1924 Vade Mecum, a compilation of, among other items, Buddhist “hymns” accompanied by Western music). One of the key songwriters that Wells takes up is Haru Matsuda of Kona. Some time after her son’s blood-stained uniform gets returned by the army after his death on the battlefields of Italy, this Issei Buddhist mother composed the following song lyrics to deal with the death: A War Song Thousands of miles away from the homeland, the bright red sunset in Italy looms so far away, My beloved child is buried under stone. It is too sad to simply say that he was a brave soldier, who dashed toward the enemy before anyone else. Though he killed so many foes, now he lies asleep there. Oh, how fierce the fighting must have been. His fellow soldier suddenly fell beside him. Carl ran over. He could not let his friend just lie on the ground, though there were the strict military prohibitions against proceeding without orders. Carl encouraged him, held him in his bosom, and put a bandage on him; all on the battlefield. It was that moment when Carl was shot, and fell. Oh, my beloved Carl, you became a part of Italy’s soil. Six years have already passed; finally you have come back to us loving parents who have waited and waited for your return to your homeland, Hawaii. You have come back guided by the compassionate hands of America. You have come back silently. You have come back silently. Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu. Patriotism and War 137 Although sung to the tune of a Japanese war song (Gunka), it is clear that the “homeland” here is Hawaii and that Buddhism had helped the family come to terms with their acceptance of his death and their feeling that they were part of America through his sacrifice to the U.S. Army. No longer using his Japanese name, Gorō, “Carl” and other Nisei Buddhist soldiers who proved their loyalty to the United States come to represent the idea that Americanism is not a matter of race and religion. This notion that one can be a Buddhist and a loyal American...