Campfire Diary, Joel Sanderson; Roger Shimomura

The title Campfire Diary alludes to the misrepresentation of places like
Minidoka as camps, a term associated with leisure and travel, while
in reality they were the sites of unconstitutional mass incarceration
of Japanese Americans. In Campfire Diary, Shimomura rewrites his
earlier performance Seven Kabuki Plays, combining it with a recitation
of a poem introduced in Trans-Siberian Excerpts titled “Moon Seen
as Exiles.” This performance integrates six translated entries from his
grandmother Toku Shimomura’s diaries that date from the 1941 attack
on Pearl Harbor to Toku’s first Christmas at Minidoka in 1942.
Shimomura isolates the audience by beginning the first six acts with one
of Toku’s diary entries narrated in Japanese, only giving the translated
readings afterward. However, he also uses sound and lighting effects
to pull the audience into the stark environment of the camp as his
grandmother experienced it.
In the closing act, the poem “Moon Seen as Exiles,” written by an
anonymous internee, is narrated in English, followed by the recitation of
select lyrics in Japanese interspersed with instrumentation, and finally,
the sound of airplanes passing overhead.
Here in Minidoka in Idaho,
on the high plains with sagebrush
packs of coyote roam at night.
Even though spring comes, no flowers bloom.
In summer, strong winds whirl;
in winter, snowstorms hit our windows.
Bearing on our backs the word enemy,
we ten thousand, wire-fenced in,
endure a wretched life severed from yesteryear.
In fifty years of endeavor and work,
we had built a foundation,
Abandoning it, we watch the moon. Exiles.
No matter how hard our pains,
we sacrifice under national policy,
taking each other’s hand, vowing to endure
When the breeze of peach blows,
spring with blooming flowers will come around.
Then our pains will become a tale of past dreams.