Overview

The narrative of poetry and prose begins on the eve of Pearl Harbor. An old Croatian fisherman rows across Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island to light the kerosene lamps to guide the ferries in, as he does each night. Christmas lights decorate the cottages scattered around the harbor. The lights of Seattle glow to the east. A star falls ""from the wayside of infinity."" The next morning, a Sunday, brings the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The owners of the Bainbridge Island Review, Walt and Milly Woodward, work into the wee hours to publish a special edition. Walt Woodward reminds his neighbors, ""I am positive every Japanese family on the Island has an intense loyalty for the United States of America and stands ready to defend it."" Up and down the West Coast, however, hatred is stirring. Little more than two months later, President Franklin Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 authorizing the removal of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast of the United States. On March 30, 1942, 227 Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island, under bayonet guard, are marched aboard the ferry Kehloken bound for Seattle and a train waiting to take them to Manzanar, a barbed-wire camp in the central California desert. Many of their island neighbors turned out to see them off. Not a few of them weep. The author, using historical sources and family recollections, has crafted a poetic narrative of one of the most conspicuous injustices in American history, and explores how the healing goes on.

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9781947021778

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Mike Dillon is the master of taking an event, even a small personal event, and unfolding it to present a broad emotional vista. His tone is face-to-face conversation--his eyes are looking into yours in these poems. He recounts the details of the removals as personal acts. There are no polemics; his is not an appropriation of someone else's pain. It is shown to us as all our pain focused on the few. But equally all our own is the stark fact that many of us have recently lost touch with that reality. -- Frank Carsey

Mike Dillon is the master of taking an event, even a small personal event, and unfolding it to present a broad emotional vista. His tone is face-to-face conversation--his eyes are looking into yours in these poems. He recounts the details of the removals as personal acts. There are no polemics; his is not an appropriation of someone else's pain. It is shown to us as all our pain focused on the few. But equally all our own is the stark fact that many of us have recently lost touch with that reality. -- Frank Carsey This we should not forget--the very un-American round-up and imprisonment of immigrants and American Citizens. And let us not forget this happened on the direction of nothing more than a president's signature on an executive order at the beginning of our involvement in WWII. Mike Dillon drags that terrible memory back into daylight with his fine prose and--as always--fine poetry in his newest book. It helps that he grew up so close to one of the roundups and that he knew participants. But even without that leg-up, he'd have done a beautiful job, for he is a journalist in addition to a poet. He has a keen eye. Buy this book and read it in one sitting--which is what I did. It will change you. Larry Duthie When I need for my world to stop for a little while, I pull out one of Mike Dillon's books of prose and poetry. His quiet, clear observations never fail to ease me toward a still point. He does it again in his latest, directing our attention to the removal of the Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. With tender, yet searing, words reflecting the devastation of our actions...and our inactions. Writing of the heartbreak and experiences of those taken from their homes, gently encouraging us to take a look within ourselves and our views of other . A very timely message much needed in today's world. Jordan McKenna Eye of a journalist. Heart of a poet. Mike Dillon's poems and prose on the removal of the Island's Japanese after Pearl Harbor takes us through a journey of darkness and light of gaman: a Japanese word for enduring the seemingly unendurable with patience and dignity. This collection finds me at a loss for words to describe the perfect beauty, the searing pain held in his words as Mike brings each story, each moment into the light. For us to clearly remember, for us to unblinkingly see now. Anna Linzer

Author Information

Mike Dillon's Bainbridge Island roots reach back four generations. He lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on Puget Sound a few miles north of Bainbridge and twelve miles northwest of Seattle. Four books of his poetry have been published by Bellowing Ark Press, including That Which We Have Named, (2008). Red Moon Press has published three books of his haiku, including The Road Behind (2003). Several of his haiku were included in Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, W.W. Norton (2013). He is a retired publisher of community newspapers, a field he entered inspired by the example of Walt and Milly Woodward, who defended their Japanese American neighbors in the pages of their newspaper, the Bainbridge Review, during World War II. In 2013 the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association recognized Dillon with its Master Editor/Publisher award.

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