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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [39], Line —— 0.0p —— Norm PgEn [39], angela waldie Challenging the Confines Haiku from the Prison Camps On a small scrap of paper lying on a plywood table in a cramped room that was once a horse stable, in a form restricted to seventeen syllables— as unyielding as the barbed wire fence that traps the cold night—with a pen that is almost out of ink, imagine writing freedom. Imagine finding the words that move against one another and against your loneliness and frustration in such a way that they create, if only for a moment, a place of peace. And imagine that in these few words, intrinsic to your language and cultural heritage, you can convey the essence of a historical atrocity to future generations, communicating your experiences through a profound attentiveness to the nuances of the natural world. Reading from within the confines of canonized environmental writing, such as that of Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold, I once considered environmental literature to be a series of tributes to landscapes known and loved. In the experience of these celebrated nature writers, residence in remote places is often portrayed as a welcome escape from civilization; harsh and secluded landscapes are regarded as places of refuge and rejuvenation; new environments are to be explored and this exploration is recorded for the benefit of future generations. But what if this experience were to change? What if a group of writers were exiled in a foreign environment, not by choice but by force? Japanese Americans imprisoned in internment camps during World War II were exiled, within their own nation, in landscapes unfamiliar to them. While confined to the camps, many of the internees practiced traditional art forms. Watercolor paintings revealed the camps juxtaposed against the often vast and uninhabited landscapes that surrounded them. Japanese gardens arose from deserts and swampy lowlands, as plants known and unknown were cultivated side by side in familiar patterns. Similarly, haiku provided a form through which internees could orient themselves to the nuances of their harsh, yet often beautiful, environments. 39 40 angela waldie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [40], Line —— 0.0p —— Norm PgEn [40], The haiku of the internment camps provide a unique perspective on various American landscapes. Written by internees who were struggling to exist in unfamiliar places and who, rather than being free to explore these new environments, experienced them from within the confines of fenced enclosures , these haiku reflect the observations of a group of poets who gained an intimate understanding of places previously unknown to them. Often with little activity to fill their days, the internees had ample time to reflect on the surrounding landscape: to learn the qualities of dawn and dusk; to consider the character of the passing seasons; and to wonder at the names of the plants, birds, deserts, or mountains that inhabited their new surroundings. Internment haiku, which convey such precise attentiveness to the natural environment, deserve recognition in the canon of environmental literature. Although the internees did not seek out the environments of which they wrote, their haiku convey a mindfulness to details of the places in which they found themselves as well as poignant recollections of the places they had left behind. On February 19, 1942, just over two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, allowing for the designation of “military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded” (“Executive Order 9066,” reprinted in Girdner and Loftis 521). In March 1942, all people of Japanese descent living in the western half of the West Coast states and Arizona were ordered to move from this “militarily sensitive area” (Gesensway and Roseman 41). Of the approximately 113,000 West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry, 80,000 were Nisei , American citizens, most under the age of twenty-five. The rest were Issei , who had been born in Japan and subsequently immigrated to the United States. A federal statute prevented the Issei from becoming American citizens .1 The Tolan Committee...

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