Heart Mountain, Revisited
Nancy does not recall when she first heard the word “camp” in family conversation. But whenever it came up, it was not about trauma, or shame, or hardship; it was in the context of light-hearted stories, or memories of camp friends, or little details about the food or camp activities. It was casual and matter-of-fact in a way that hid the deep underlying emotions around the experience. Gaining understanding of what that experience was really like involved pilgrimages to both Heart Mountain and Manzanar. Nancy would still like to visit Tule Lake, where her father, older brother, and father were imprisoned for a time. Her uncle and her grandfather answered “no-no” on the infamous “loyalty questionnaire,” while her father, a minor, was too young to participate in the process.
In 2015, Nancy accompanied her mother and other family members to the annual Heart Mountain pilgrimage, and wrote about it in this Discover Nikkei article. Her mother had not been back after leaving the prison camp as a 12-year-old, and expressed the desire to visit one more time.
Nancy recalls that on that pilgrimage with her mother in 2015, “My mother claimed not to remember much else about camp. Yet as we made the 13-mile drive from Cody, where we were staying, to the site of the camp and as the mountain suddenly appeared in the distance, she gasped audibly and whispered, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe it.’ Tears came to her eyes, shocking her with their arrival. She was unprepared for the onslaught of feelings, she told us later, of nostalgia and sadness.”
During that week-long visit, they listened to speakers like the famous prisoner and former Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta, speak about their memories of the camp. But when walking alongside her daughter, she opened up about the memories she had of those four years where she lived from ages nine to twelve.
She remembered the brutal windstorms that sent the tumbleweeds scuttling across the dusty campgrounds, and how it was impossible to escape the looming Heart Mountain in the background. She remembered the harsh sub-zero winters and how unprepared she and so many other prisoners in the camp were for the weather. She remembered ordering peacoats from the Montgomery Ward catalog that first winter, waiting in the long lines in the mess hall, skating across the cement floor of the laundry room and catching horned lizards in the desert that surrounded them.
The emotional homecoming for her mother gave her a kind of closure, a coming-to-terms with what had happened to her family, and a feeling of peace. “I now feel like I don’t need to go back again,” she told her daughter.
Today, Nancy says, many former incarcerees and their descendants are discussing these years in more detail. Some are fighting against current injustices and reminding Americans what can happen when civil liberties and rights are lost at the hands of fear and paranoia of the “other.”
The Legacy of Tomiko and Ryokuyō
In her introductory essay to By the Shore of Lake Michigan, Professor Eri F. Yasuhara writes about the contributions of both Tomiko and Ryokuyō to the Issei (first-generation) literature of the World War II and resettlement period, “There is not a plethora of materials written by the Issei about the camp experience available in English; thus this translation of poems that the Matsumotos wrote between 1942 and 1945 is a valuable source for learning what the experience was like for at least one couple.”
Nancy, in her preface to the book, notes that despite successive generations’ perceptions of the Issei as stoically silent, many in fact expressed their deep feelings in their poems. Many of those poems have been lost, and many languish untranslated. The gap between them and their Nisei children was not only linguistic, but also one of differing national loyalties.
This generation gap explains the misconception on the part of Nancy’s mother about the nature of her parents’ poetry book. Far from a self-funded vanity project, on the merits of her poetry, Tomiko had been invited to contribute to what is now a 300-volume tanka anthology series that spans the ninety-year history of Uta to Kanshō, the poetry society she belonged to.
“It was a misunderstanding, or an under-appreciation of the significance of what her parents had created in their book,” Nancy says. “It reflects the gap between the Issei and Nisei generation that widened during the war, when the American-born Nisei felt little allegiance to Japan, America’s sworn enemy. There was a cognitive dissonance to looking like the enemy but feeling as American as any of their classmates. So many Nisei were eager to prove their loyalty, through acts such as enlisting in the armed forces to fight for the U.S. Meanwhile, many in their Japanese-born parents’ generation had to hide or downplay their love for and allegiance to their mother country. This is something that comes through strongly in my grandfather’s poems.”
From the preface of the 1960 publication, Iwao Okayama writes, “There is a poignancy to the poet’s frank portrayal of human life as she writes of the various phases of her own life: how a productive life of labor began at the internment camp for this one Japanese woman possessing poise, good grace, and generosity; how she felt rather lost temporarily when the war ended; how she faced many difficulties rebuilding her life after the war; the complex psychology behind her experience of having her beloved son drafted as an American soldier.”
Tomiko would describe this landmark publication as follows: “During those years, poetry has been part of my life; it has been a source of strength and solace, and I have not been able to give it up. Even in the midst of our busy daily lives, I have continued to write poems… Yet I continue to hope that the publication of this immature collection of poetry will provide me with the opportunity to make, however small improvements with my poetry, so that my future works can keep up with those produced by my fellow poets in Japan.”
In his afterword, Ryokuyō wrote, “I would also like to take this opportunity to reflect on my past endeavors and continue to work hard as I revise and improve my poems. I hope to write one good poem in my remaining years.”
As Professor Eri Yasuhara concludes in her introductory essay, “It is often said that the reason the Issei were able to endure so many hardships in their lives was because they were doing it “for their children”—kodomo no tame ni. In the end, for Tomiko and Ryokuyō Matsumoto, too it was all about their children—their safety, security, and happiness. They endured the incarceration, Japan’s defeat, the difficulties of their new life in the unfamiliar city of Chicago, all so that their children and, eventually, grandchildren could grow and thrive in America. How fitting, then that one of their grandchildren took on the daunting task of translating their tanka, their poetic journal, so that we could get to know this Issei couple and part of their life’s journey in this country.”
Nancy’s Work and Mission
Nancy, who also writes about agroecology, food, saké, culture and arts, has taken part in two other important projects and collaborations dealing with the World War II Japanese incarceration.
In 2018, she collaborated with Joanne Oppenheim (author of Dear Miss Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference) on Unforgotton Voices From Heart Mountain: An Oral History of the Incarceration, a collection of oral histories from inside and outside the prison camp. She also contributed to Displaced: Manzanar 1942–1945: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans, a book of images from the prison camp taken by photographers including Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Toyo Miyatake, and Jack Iwata.
These books not only touch on the most difficult chapter of her family’s collective life, they are a reminder of how fragile our civil rights are, Nancy says. “I feel a sense of duty, an obligation to tell these stories, especially against the backdrop of what is happening in American today under the current administration. Japanese Americans need to speak up and show up in solidarity with immigrants who are being demonized and made scapegoats. What happened to our Japanese families is happening again to others.
“Writing about these topics is also a way to understand my own family, its history, and why we are the way we are. I think this—along with horror at the way history is repeating itself—is what drives a lot of interest in the wartime experience on the part of Yonsei and Gosei today.”
I would like to express my gratitude to Nancy Matsumoto for allowing me to discuss and collaborate on her most recent project. I hope that I have done justice to her maternal grandmother’s and grandfather’s work and the stories they kept in those tanka poems.
© 2025 Tai Bickhard
