Pain Squared

Just to continue the theme of the Japanese haiku, I thought I'd throw in my two cents (and since it's a penny for one's thoughts, I suppose I get to express two).

On the one hand, I find it darkly amusing that America has chosen to try and quietly sweep the whole Japanese internment camp ordeal under the proverbial rug. Granted, I'm not as well-versed with the rationale behind the Executive Order which authorized it so I can't completely condemn the decision (although I do with the current amount of knowledge I possess on the subject). With that out of the way, I found each of the following haiku to have a certain resonance:

On certain days
heart is full of hypocrisy
flowers of gobo are purple

Black clouds instantly shroud
autumn sky
hail storming against us today also

I find the "heart full of hypocrisy" phrase to be quite pertinent. Here were a group of Japanese-Americans who understood that one of Americas great virtues (supposedly) was its acceptance of everyone (unless of course they were black; then they still were considered sub-human. Irony creeps up all the time...). Here the Japanese-Americans were denied the freedoms they probably came here to get in the first place. The insult to that injury was that the German-Americans did not suffer the same fate. Needless to say, this hypocrisy on the part of the American government did not escape the Japanese-Americans. It understandably caused them quite a bit of irritation.

With regard to the second haiku, it figuratively refers to the lives they used to have being swept away by a violent storm. What can one do against a storm? One cannot argue with a storm or any force of nature. In this case, the storm was the government and the Japanese-Americans could not argue with it either.

Not to play the moral equivalency game (although it is fun to do so sometimes), but the Japanese did far worse things to the Chinese in WWII. I'd advise people to check out a book called The Rape of Nanking to see what I'm talking about. It makes what the American government did to the Japanese-Americans look like royal treatment. I don't mean to say those actions by the Japanese excuse America's actions; I bring it up because it shows that human cruelty permeates every society in varying degrees.

P.S. I apologize if this is a bit disjointed. It's rather late and my brain is not working very well (although some would argue that is my normal state).