By the Shore of Lake Michigan, a translation of WWII-era Japanese concentration camp poetry, recovers the lost voices of Japanese immigrants.

By Tomiko and Ryokuyo Matsumoto. Edited by Nancy Matsumoto. This collection of Japanese tanka poetry, is now accessible to English-language readers for the first time. The volume offers a rare look into the inner lives of an often-overlooked generation during the most difficult period of their lives.

In 1960, the Matsumotos, Issei (first-generation) immigrants, published their collection,Mishigan Kohan/By the Shore of Lake Michigan. Their tankaa traditional form of Japanese poetrychronicled their lives over a seventeen-year period, from their 1942 forced relocation from Los Angeles to the Heart Mountain, Wyoming prison camp, through their resettlement in Chicago at war’s end. While many second and third-generation Japanese American voices have told the story of the wartime incarceration in fiction, essays, on stage, and in film, very little of the voluminous Japanese-language writings of this era have been translated into English. By the Shore of Lake Michigan is a rare and frank account of the tumultuous events of World War II and its aftermath, from an Issei point of view.

The book is a collaboration between editor Nancy Matsumoto (granddaughter of Tomiko and Ryokuyo) and accomplished translators Mariko Aratani (The Ink Dark Moon) and Kyoko Miyabe. Ranging from the lyrical to the objective, the political to the deeply personal, the poems trace the Matsumotos’ passage through the darkest chapter of Japanese American history, the unconstitutional incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent. Included are a foreword by Nancy Matsumoto; an introductory essay by Eri F.Yasuhara, dean emerita, California State University San Bernardino; and annotations providing historic, cultural, and literary insights into the poems.

Paper: 351 pp.