Last Saturday, I took a class with poet Kaia Sand to explore two of Portland's lost neighborhoods- Nihonmachi and Vanport. Readers may remember my interest in the Japaneseinternment during WWII here.
It's been a long time since I've taken a writing class. We met at Floyd's Cafe in Old Town, did some practice writing exercises about place and old neighborhoods we remembered from our childhood and how they are different today.
We visited the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center to learn about Nihonmachi or Japantown in Portland. Then we walked to the Japanese American Historical Plaza at the north end of Water Front Park on the Willamette River. I wrote the poem below to honor this old neighborhood and its residents.
NihonmachiNihonmachi- lost and revisited
A different, extinct place
No Kanji speak
No Issei
No friends' door stoop conversation
No stacked laundry bundles butcher-paper wrapped with family name
Where to live? No hotels only registered historic buildings
Where to bathe? No 20 cent bath houses
What to eat? No Teikoku Mercantile
April 28, 1942
Did you see the Exclusion Oder No. 26?
It changed everything
Silence, people gone, forced out
3,500 mandated to Portland Assembly Center
aka Pacific NW Livestock Exposition Pavilion
Where cattle stood days before
the stench, the rain, the exhaustion, the unknown dark fear
Gaman- accept what is with patience and dignity
We have to gaman
We have to gaman
We have to gaman
Crowded trains bound for Minidoka
A dry and arid landscape
We have to gaman
Persevere, be resourceful, make do
Create with what is here- scraps, found objects reinvented into beauty
We have to gaman
We have to gaman
We have to gaman
