Invisible Americans

 An American, Chiura Obata. . .
A name or whose art you won’t see at the Whitney.

A major retrospective of his work opened at the Smithsonian in November of last year.  An artist and friend  told me about it, saying “Wow, a must see!” and yet, have you read or heard about it in “the paper of record”? Or seen it in any other major news or cultural coverage?

Nor the work of American Ruth Asawa, who dreamed of becoming an art teacher but couldn’t because of  laws or discriminatory practices which excluded the ethnically Japanese from all kinds of professions and activities like being a teacher, practicing law or working for the government, etc. As a result of exclusionary race laws, she started her young adult life in “the camps.”  Her work is groundbreaking for its organic forms which astound in its simple complexity.  She is part of a major retrospective of women’s art at The Art Institute of Chicago, but her link to our understanding of American history is often obscured, this time by Mexico and Modernism.

Nor American illustrator Mine Okubo, author of an early graphic novel documenting her experience in a US concentration camp, called “Citizen 13660,” first published 1946 is largely ignored despite today’s graphic novel craze.

Or rarely is the work of American writer John Okada (about the No No Boys) included in discussions about race and class in America. . .nor are the poems of American Lawson Fusao Inada. Despite being the Poet Laureate of Oregon, 2006, most educated Americans have never heard of him or his story. 

Here’s a taste:

To This Day
Have you ever wondered
whatever happened to all the
barbed wire that defined
and confined the so-called
camp at Tule Lake? 

That’s a good question
we have a right to ask
as ordinary tax-paying citizens:
“Whatever happened
to all that barbed wire?”

When you think about it,
the very idea of fencing such an expanse of land
was a daunting challenge
for all those concerned 

because it wasn’t easy
to coordinate “back East” planning
with “out West” implementation,
along with the manufacture
and transportation of materials
from all points in between.

And it was also 
an innovative undertaking,
a historical precedent,
because this fence was to confine,
not cattle or criminals,
but residents of the American West,
who, in the western tradition,
were to be “rounded up,”
and “herded” into fenced areas –
Tule Lake being but one such place.

Now, thinking about barbed wire,
it could be easy to consider
related matters that would
take us off into a tangent
about, oh, fence posts
and other such aspects
of construction, sidetracking us
into thinking about cutting
forests for fence posts,
and all the effort, energy, expense
involved in the overall venture –
including catered lunches
for planning meetings sequestered
in the “red tape” of D.C. –
so let’s just focus on the wire
that arrived by train
on huge spools, I suppose,
ready to be unloaded
by many men with machines
who would then, over days,
depending on weather,
erect the barbed wire fence.

And let’s keep going forward,
like the war effort,
not backward to the origins
of the wire that would include
iron ore, iron mines, steel mills,
all the sweat, smoke, steam,
shoveling, smelting, stamping
of the extensive process
of manufacturing wire
and then barbing it;

Yes, let’s keep going forward,
like the war effort
not backward to the origins
of the war, or to the barb wire
trenches of the First World War,

but to the brand-new
barbed wire fence of Tule Lake.
The wire was gleaming in the sun!
And with all those barbs –
thousands upon thousands –
all those strands were sparkling!

As we can imagine –
the fence was really something!
And just imagine –
from the air, the shining structure
may have resembled –
a gigantic musical instrument,
that storms and raging winds
would strum and pluck . . .
At any rate, whatever happened
to all that barbed wire?
It’s all gone somewhere, somehow,
obviously, which is a good thing;
otherwise, it would pose a hazard
for wildlife, and rusted barbs
could cause tetanus in humans . . .
especially children.

So perhaps it’s immaterial
to dwell on such material matters
like rusted wire of the past;
rather, as we can imagine,
in this advanced day and age,
there just might be a mentality
among us, between us,
that, to this day,
serves to keep us separated
serves to keep us confined
between “them” and “us,” 

and this mentality, this condition,
invisible as it is,
intangible as it is, 

can actually function
like actual barbed wire – 

and it is up to everyone,
in the spirit of humanity,
in the name of mutuality,

to reach through the strands
with extended hands.

Lawson Fusao Inada was born in Fresno, California, and as a child during World War II, he was imprisoned in California, Arkansas, and Colorado. His books of poetry include Before the War, Legends from Camp, and Drawing the Line. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and has served as Poet Laureate of Oregon.

Nor did you find the Yellow Bowl Project at the ICP in their “For Freedoms” exhibition a couple of years ago about contemporary photographers' exploration of FDR’s Four Freedoms, nor did any major news outlets write about them, perhaps because they told a different story of Freedom and America than they were ready to share. The tea bowls were the only contemporary work of photography included in the FDR Library‘s year-long exhibition of FDR’s signing of EO 9066 in 2017, when the library was determined to try and tell a more complete story of “the Four Freedoms” back in 2017.  Even at NPR. . .where I am not unknown, no one found this interesting enough.  Often told that what happened to Japanese Americans was not relevant, "Take it to the Japan Society or the Asia Society" curators and editors would say. Among those who know - the scholars, archivists and experts in the field of immigration and the history of America's race laws written to determine who could and could not participate in this democracy by virtue of whether one was or was “not white”, citizen or not - many want to acknowledge this very American story.  It seems it’s the public media that doesn’t.  

Some say it happened over 75 years ago.   Still others say this doesn’t happen in America and didn’t. But it not only happened here, it happened within our lifetimes. It’s important because the cycle continues today. It’s important because the United States is important to the world. We think we have moved forward, but only find that History repeats itself. With this story, American history and its claim that racism ended after the Civil War doesn’t make sense. The ownership of humans may have ended, but exclusion laws took its place. Modeled after the laws to exclude Native Americans, it began 100 years of exclusionary laws written by congress and state and local legislatures around the country against those who were legally deemed by a court of law to be “not white.”  It’s the missing link which most public media doesn’t want the public to know.

But they shall not erase us. . . is what I say.