JAPANESE AMERICAN CONCENTRATION CAMP
KAIKO HAIKU (USA)
Beginning with the history of Kaiko Haiku and the development of the
clubs, de Cristoforo documents the haiku movement, its leaders, and her own
involvement in the Valley Ghinsha Haiki Kai prior to the War, before she is
transferred to the various camps which accomplished the “uprooting” of those
groups and individuals through a US diaspora, before focusing in her book on
the both the histories of the various groups—the Delta Ginsha Poets, the Denson
Valley Ginsha Poets, and the Tule Lake Valley Ginsha Poets—while naming the individual
artists and representing haiku from their restricted output in the camps. Along
the way, de Cristoforo talks about the other artists in the camps and reveals
camp conditions and the continual transition of the “prisoners” which
ultimately destroyed the significant poetic contribution of Japanese Americans
before the Second World War.
Caught up in events of the War and the demands put upon American
Japanese nationalists in the camps, de Cristoforo herself was ultimately
expatriated to Japan to her birth city of Hiroshima, facing the nuclear
devastation of that world. Working for the US government, she met her husband,
Wilfred H. de Cristoforo, an Army officer stationed in Japan, and returned with
him, against difficult restrictions, to her original home in Fresno.
Among the original Japanese American
teachers of the Hakiu was Ozawa Neiji
(1886) and Kumuro Kyotaro (1885), teaching the original pre-war Fresno
Club of Matsuda Hekisamei, Ozawa Waka, Gomyo Reiko, Hosoda Chiyoko, Shinda
Yuko, Takeda Senbo, Miwa Kogen, Saga Shokoshi, Kawada Michiko, Sumioa Reishi,
Kameno Kazuko, Uemaruko Shizuku, Yamada Shuko and Masumoto Bisho. The Stockton
Delta Ginsha Group consisted of Agari Yotenchi, Fujita Tojo, Fukuda Hisao,
Hirai Tokuji, Iguchi Tyonan, Kanow Soichi, Koyama Kido, Kume Seioshi, Kunimori
Honjyoshi, Matsui Ryokuin, Morimoto Misen, Nakao Yajin, Okamoto Hyakuissei,
Okamoto Kikuha, Okamoto Shiho, Ouchide Konan, Oyama Yashimatsu, Shintomi
Daisha, Suzuki Shonan, Takaoka Hiroyo, Takaoka Senbinshi, Taniguchi Sadayo, Taniguchi
Isamu, Tsuekawa Hangetsu, Tsunekawa Takako, and Yamada Jyosha. The Tule Lake
Valley Ginsha Poets consisted of Hirai Tokuji, Matsuda Hekisamei, Matusuda
Kazue (Violet Kazue de Christoforo), Matsushita Suiko, Morimoto Misen, Okamoto
Hyakuissei, Saga Shokoshi, Sagara Sei,
Suzuki Shonan, Takeda Senbo, Tateshina Byoso, Uyemakuro Shizuku, and Wada
Hakuro.
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