May Sky: There's Always Tomorrow: A History and Anthology of Haiku - Violet Kazue De Cristof... Book

The dark time in American history of the arrest and internment of Japanese American citizens in World War II is here presented in terms of the important cultural activity of the haiku clubs and their members. Violet Kazue de Cristoforo was a young girl when she joined the Valley Ginsha Haiku Kai of Fresno before World War II. Two of the California free verse poetry clubs, the Valley Ginsha and the Delta Ginsha of Stockton, owed their existence to the haiku masters Neiji Ozawa and Kyotaro Komuro. But suddenly with the outbreak of World War II, the members of these clubs, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, were sent to internment centers. Some were sent to the swamplands of Arkansas, others to Arizona, California, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Yet despite their separation and dispersal, the clubs continued to survive and had an enormous cultural and spiritual impact upon the members of the internment camps and centers. May Sky: There Is Always Tomorrow is an account of the significant contribution made by the haiku writers to wartime literature. Through years of research and study, de Cristoforo has tracked down most of the haiku members of the different camps and documented their activities. Equally importantly, she had chosen a large selection of haiku written in the camps and translated them into English. This significant collection presents a large selection of these works in the original nihongo (Japanese) and romaji (Japanese written in the Latin alphabet) in addition to the English.