John Zheng
Responses
-- after Dorothea Lange’s I Am An American, 13 March 1942
On December 8, 1941, the day after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese grocery owner in Oakland, California put up a storefront sign: I Am An American. Soon he was forcibly removed to the relocation center.
summer trip
to Rohwer Site
the replica watchtower
a stern guard
under the hot sun
Restricted when they arrived by swampy land, barracks, armed guards, and barbed-wire fences, they were no longer treated as Americans. Some of them would never leave.
internees laid to rest in a strange land — wandering spirits still wondering why
Editor’s Note: For more information and to see images of Dorothea Lange’s “I Am an American” photograph, click here to go to the Library of Congress website .
About the Author
John Zheng has authored Enforced Rustication in the Chinese Cultural Revolution and published haibun and tanka prose in cho, Haibun Today, Southern Quarterly, and Spillway. His latest book is A Way of Looking, a collection of haibun and tanka prose.