Inada and Robles Rap to the Next Generation

By Brian Kluepfel
Special to AsianWeek

Lawson Fusao Inada and Al Robles have spent decades writing and teaching the hidden histories of Japanese and Filipino Americans. The poet/historians appeared together at San Francisco State’s University Poetry Center last week to share their wisdom and inspiration with a fresh crop of writers.

Inada, who has taught at Southern Oregon State College since 1966, was sent to an interment camp for Japanese Americans at the age of 4. The Fresno native’s work in poetry and prose speaks to that experience, but he emphasized that history belongs to everyone. “Maybe your grandparents were in camps,” he said, “but you were there in their bodies. If we see it like that, then we all can relate.”

Inada said he saw things from a perspective many don’t have. “When I saw the World Trade Centers collapse last year, I saw the face of the Japanese architect who designed those buildings,” said Inada. “Then I saw Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta on television, who I know was in the interment camps in Wyoming. Things happen and come around again, and we’re all related,” he said.

Inada spoke of his landmark work, Only What We Could Carry, a collection of diverse writings spanning the period of the internment camps. Inada edited the book, and talked about the bravery of people who were willing to reexamine that part of their lives.

“These days you got so much stuff,” said Inada. “Imagine if you had to choose only what you could carry?” His mother, he remembered, still chose to cram her large suitcase with family photo albums.

Robles has spent a lifetime documenting the lives of first generation Manong — Filipino elders — as both a poet and oral historian. He was active in the fight against the demolition of the International Hotel in Manilatown on Kearny Street, which resulted in the displacement of many Asian immigrants. The ponytailed poet talked about his sixties activism, noting, “We were terrorist poets!”

Robles co-founded the Kearny Street Asian American Writers Workshop. Rappin’ with Ten Thousand Carabaos in the Dark, a collection of his poetry published in 1995, documents the Filipino experience, particularly in the Fillmore district where Robles was raised.

Inada and Robles, who first met in the early 1970s, never failed to show a sense of humor. Robles recounted the story of a man who bribed a guard in order to sneak out of the camps for a trip to the cinema with a girlfriend. He and the girl never came back. “It was a long movie, man!” said Robles.

Inada said his personality fits the poetic life. “Being a novelist takes discipline, man! Poetry is cheap. You just need a napkin, or a piece of toilet paper. You can even write it on your hand!”

Inada and Robles were inspired by the musical soundtrack of their lives. Robles has written it in poems like “Jazz of My Youth,” and Inada in “Thelonious Monk in the Redwoods.” But Robles told the budding writers that great poets like Pablo Neruda could “even write a poem about socks,” and that he learned the most about the Manong community and found their poetry in simple meals of fish and pork he shared with them.

Inada noted that most Americans share a difficult past. “All of your families have been through some stuff, but we get a kind of amnesia,” he said. Robles and Inada lead an annual pilgrimage to the sites of the former camps, including Manzanar, which is now a national monument. In George W. Bush’s America, these poets reminded students that racial scapegoating is a challenge that every generation has to face anew.