Farewell to Manzanar

Recently I spent several hours at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, where over 10,000 Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. The site is now managed by the U.S. National Park Service. In an isolated area at the far western side of the center stands an obelisk, marking the burial places of several internees:

Cemetery

Words I cannot read
Commemorate the dead
At the Manzanar camp.

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

My senryu came closer to the truth than I knew when I wrote it. Just yesterday I was reading Farewell to Manzanar, and stumbled upon this paragraph:

Near [the obelisk] a dozen graves were outlined in the sand with small stones, and a barbed-wire fence surrounded them to keep back the cattle and the tumbleweed. The black Japanese script cut into the white face of the obelisk read simply, “A Memorial to the Dead.”

Farewell to Manzanar is itself a poignant memorial to both the living and the dead, who endured the hardships and indignities of internment simply because of their Japanese ancestry.