Duncan Ryuken Williams: When Buddhists Were A "National Security Threat"

Scholar and Soto Zen priest Duncan Ryuken Williams joins Tricycle Editor and Publisher James Shaheen to discuss how Japanese Americans interned during World War II stood up for religious freedom, how this part of our history has shaped American Buddhism today, and how this disturbing legacy of persecution has taken on new relevance. Williams is the author of the book American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War.

Transcript

Hello,

And welcome to Tricycle Talks.

I'm James Shaheen,

Editor and publisher of Tricycle,

The Buddhist Review.

Our guest this episode is author,

Scholar,

And Soto Zen priest Duncan Ryukon Williams.

Williams is the director of the Shinsou Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at the University of Southern California.

He has also taught at UC Berkeley,

UC Irvine,

Trinity College,

And has served as a chaplain at Harvard.

Professor Williams has just come out with the new book,

American Sutra,

A story of faith and freedom in the Second World War.

The book takes a close look at the Japanese American Buddhist experience in U.

S.

Internment camps during the war.

Williams's examination and scholarship reveal the role that religion played in the widespread discrimination of the era,

A time when being a Buddhist and an American was seen as incompatible.

Meanwhile,

That same faith sustained the Japanese Americans during their wartime confinement.

Out of this experience,

A uniquely American Buddhism was born.

Duncan Williams,

Thank you so much for joining us.

Good to be here with you,

James.

I'd like to start with a few words about American Sutra.

It's a remarkably moving and compelling book.

It's not often that a work of such sound scholarship moves me to tears,

But this one did.

It's the story of the Japanese American experience in World War II about individuals,

Families,

Congregations that were brutally uprooted and forced into internment camps.

But it's also an American story,

One about this country and what it means to be an American.

Who is an American?

We'll get there,

But I'd like to start at the beginning.

December 7th,

1941,

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor,

And two months later,

President Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9066.

So Duncan,

Tell us what Executive Order 9066 was.

It was an important moment for the Japanese American community in that it was an executive order issued by President Roosevelt on February 19th,

1942,

Where his order designated the West Coast of the United States as a military defense zone from which all persons of Japanese ancestry could be removed by the army.

So they were removed based on their nationality,

But what role did religion play in this?

The fact that the Japanese American community was a majority Buddhist community played a big role in the determination by the government that this was a group of people who were not only racially different from the majority of the American population,

But religiously different as well.

And so in addition to Executive Order 9066,

In February of 42,

Right on the day of Pearl Harbor,

Even while the smoke was still clearing in Honolulu,

The very first person rounded up was Bishop Gikkyo Kuchiba of the Hompa Hongan Buddhist Temple in Honolulu.

And Buddhist priests,

Shinto priests,

They were designated as national security threats.

And so there was a time in our country's history where Buddhism was considered not only un-American,

But a threat to American security and anti-American.

And how were Japanese Christians treated?

So if you were a Japanese Christian leader at that time,

Almost entirely you were left alone.

In fact,

Many Japanese American Christian leaders were informants for the FBI and informants for the intelligence agencies in identifying the people who might be threats to American national security.

It's not only religious,

However,

It's also racial.

How did their treatment compare with how,

Say,

German and Italian Americans were treated during the war?

So when the United States also declared war on Germany and Italy after declaring war on Japan,

German nationals,

Italian nationals,

Japanese nationals did become subject to that kind of focus of like,

Are there people who might be subversive or a threat to national security?

So there were some Germans who,

For example,

Belonged to the Bund,

The Nazi party in America,

Or sympathizers of Mussolini in America who were picked up by the FBI as well.

But there was no mass incarceration of an entire community of people among Italian Americans or German Americans.

As I mentioned earlier,

The Japanese Americans,

Especially those who lived on the West Coast of the United States,

Without exception,

This is 100,

Almost 20,

000 people,

Including little babies.

One of the things that struck me the most was one of the architects of the so-called interment,

Colonel Carl Bendelstone.

He was in Los Angeles in the months after Pearl Harbor.

And once the executive order had been issued,

He was asked,

What do we do with the little children,

The three-year-olds,

Or even the eight-month-old babies at the orphanage in Los Angeles?

And his reply was,

If they have even a drop of Japanese blood,

That's the words he used,

I want them in camp.

And so it was a view of the Japanese as a racial group,

Because the Japanese American community was majority Buddhist,

As a religiously other group that could not be trusted,

Even,

You know,

These little babies.

So that's the huge difference between what happened with the Japanese American community and what happened with the German American or Italian American communities.

You know,

One of the disheartening things in the whole story is that so few Americans came to the defense of the Japanese Americans,

And the media itself seemed to be complicit and didn't hesitate to stoke the anti-Japanese American hysteria.

I was surprised to discover that even the ACLU refused to take a stand.

Why do you think this is?

You know,

I think the climate at that time,

Where there was so much bitterness about the attack,

Not only on Pearl Harbor,

But decades long resentment about Asian immigration to the West Coast.

By that point,

When Pearl Harbor had happened,

The media certainly stoked the hysteria that these Japanese were,

You know,

About to poison your water or disrupt electrical lines or attack military installations.

That kind of hysteria led to a situation where groups that you would normally think,

You know,

Let's say African American groups or Jewish American groups or the ACLU,

You'd think that there'd be some people who might say,

Look,

You can't just treat a group of people just because of their race or their religion as not subject to due process,

You know,

Not afforded the rights of any other citizen to have their loyalty or their guilt be adjudicated in a court of law.

It was not until sometime later that,

You know,

Individual lawyers associated with the ACLU and other sympathetic people interested in civil liberties stood up for the Japanese.

The Quakers was,

You know,

The American Friends Service Committee.

There was a few groups and a few individuals who I think at a time when it was very unpopular to support this group of people,

They stood up for them.

Right.

You know,

I was going to ask you about that.

There were,

In fact,

People who did stand up for them and who actively aided them and helped them even after they were interned.

And I realized that they were very few.

But how significant do you find this?

You know,

One of the important things for the Japanese American community at that time was to have neighbors that might have helped with their belongings,

Who might have looked after their farms for them.

It gave them a sense that even if their own government didn't believe that they could be loyal,

That they belonged in America,

At least the people they knew,

Some of their neighbors,

Some of their fellow community members would stand up for them.

And they were also appreciative of these individuals.

They were Christians.

They were Buddhists,

Who the non-Japanese American people who stood up for that group.

Among the Buddhists,

We can note Sunya Pratt up in the Seattle-Tacoma area who took care of the Tacoma Buddhist Temple,

As well as the Seattle Buddhist Temple.

And in the Los Angeles area,

A man called Julius Goldwater,

Who had ordained as a Buddhist and had become a Buddhist cleric in the Buddhist mission of North America,

He took care of the temple,

Made sure vandals didn't get in there.

He made sure that the belongings,

The suitcases,

You know,

When people had to move based on the Executive Order 9066,

They had between a week and 10 days to get their affairs in order.

And at the end of the day,

In that forced migration to these internment camps,

They could only take what they could carry.

So that means,

You know,

Like a suitcase.

And so if you can imagine,

Like,

If you were in that circumstance,

What would you take in that suitcase?

Clothing,

You know,

Essentials.

People had to make these tough decisions about what they could carry in that one suitcase.

And so everything else,

All of their belongings,

They had to store it somewhere.

And the Buddhist temple was an important storage community center for these Japanese Americans.

And when you had a white American like Julius Goldwater,

Who was sympathetic to the Japanese,

Who's part of their Buddhist community,

Making that extra effort,

He was called a Jap lover.

Like he faced a lot of hatred for his support of the Japanese American community.

But he really went out of his way to take a stand.

You know,

It's interesting,

I should point out that Julius Goldwater was Barry Goldwater's cousin.

That's right.

Those are two very different members of the same family.

Very ironic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you mentioned this a little bit,

But,

You know,

The groundwork could have been pretty much laid by the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

And it went back as far as the 1882 Exclusion Act,

Which was meant to keep Chinese immigrants out and also the Immigration Act of 1924,

Which limited Asian immigration altogether.

But what really surprised me was the level of information,

The detail that the government had already compiled on the Japanese American community.

They knew who was Buddhist,

Who was Christian and where they lived,

What temples they went to.

Did this surprise you at all?

You know,

The World War II internment experience,

It reminds us that there was a time in America's history when Buddhism was considered a national security threat.

And it's a threat not only in terms of war,

But as you just said,

Even before the war,

A threat to American identity.

And so it does start with the Chinese Exclusion Act of the 1880s,

Where you have this rhetoric about the Chinese as unassimilable people.

And they use the term at that time.

And if you look at the Senate testimony and so forth,

It's a term heathen Chinese,

As is kind of a slur term to refer to the Chinese on the West Coast.

And what's interesting to note is that it's not just that their race or national origin is unassimilable,

But that the fact that they were heathen,

That they were not Christian,

That they were Buddhists and Taoists amongst them,

That's what made them un-American or unable to be included in the idea of America.

And if you think about this citizenship cases,

When European immigrants came to the United States,

They could naturalize and become Americans,

Right?

When Japanese or Chinese or Indians from Asia came to the United States,

Especially by the time of the 1920s,

When you have these two Supreme Court cases,

The Ozawa case and the Thind case,

Where they're told the American Constitution says you have to be a free white person or a free black person to naturalize as a US citizen.

They were told you can't do that because of your race and in case of the Thind,

Because he was classified as a Hindu,

Right?

So you have these moments where it's very clear,

Like,

There's an idea of America as a fundamentally Anglo Protestant nation.

And these people who were Buddhists,

They were both racially and religiously other than the presumption of what is American.

That's what led not only to exclusion,

But if they were included and they were already in America,

Subject to suspicion,

Subject to surveillance,

The FBI,

The ONI,

The Army G2,

All the intelligence units did have units that were surveilling Buddhist temples.

They were creating,

As you mentioned,

Reports on individuals in the community,

Especially those who are leaders like Buddhist priests,

They had FBI files on them.

They were creating registries,

These lists of people who are dangerous enough in their estimation that they needed to be arrested in case war with Japan broke out.

So all of that was in the background prior to Pearl Harbor.

In other words,

They were ready to go.

They're ready to go.

Okay,

I'd like to ask you a little bit about Buddhism in the internment camps.

First of all,

There was tremendous pressure brought to bear on American Buddhists to give up their religion,

In fact,

To dispense with any vestige of their past at all,

Religious or otherwise.

But I think it's fair to say that Buddhism nonetheless flourished in the camps.

Why is that?

You know,

I think when people experience this kind of forced removal from their homes,

They're in a state of dislocation.

They've lost everything they worked hard for in their lives.

So it's a moment when they're facing uncertainty,

Loss,

Dislocation.

And I think that's a time when people often turn to their faith to help orient them in a time of disorientation,

To help them find a path forward.

And you know,

Buddhists in camp,

Because they could only take what they could carry in a suitcase often arrested or taken in this forced removal,

Where they didn't have the regular things that they need to have to practice their faith,

They would still somehow in these camps behind barbed wire,

Find ways to maintain,

Continue and even deepen their Buddhist practice.

One of the first important Buddhist ceremonies in the kind of calendar of Buddhism,

You know,

Executive order happened in February of 1942.

In the Japanese Buddhist tradition,

They tend to celebrate the Buddha's birthday,

Hanamatsuri,

In April.

And so that's one of the first ceremonies.

And one of the stories from camp is that they didn't have the traditional,

It is usually a baby Buddha statue.

And there's a ceremony to pour sweet tea on the baby Buddha.

It's kind of a community ritual that is often done at Buddhist temples on the day to celebrate and commemorate the Buddha's birth.

People didn't have either statue or sweet tea.

So what did they do?

They went to the mess hall,

Found the largest carrot they could find,

And carved it into a semblance of a Buddha.

They had rationed coffee,

Rationed sugar,

So they made sweet coffee and use that in replacement of the sweet tea.

And they basically found a way to maintain their Buddhist faith,

Even in these most difficult circumstances.

So that's one of many,

Many stories in the book about people using their imprisonment,

The fact that they lost freedom to still find freedom or liberation through their Buddhist practice.

Let me tell you one last story.

There's a Buddhist priest that belonged to the Shingon Buddhist tradition.

And in that tradition,

There's this idea that you use the karmic hindrances,

The karmic hindrances that might be even negative as a basis for finding enlightenment.

So one Buddhist priest who served at the Los Angeles Koyasan temple,

He was in a camp where it was a high security camp.

He was considered one of the more dangerous Buddhist priests.

And in that camp,

They had a roll call.

They had every time they went to the bathroom,

They'd have to get a guard's permission and request permission to go to the bathroom.

They also had these searchlights that would go over their barracks at night.

And he practiced a form of meditation called kumyo meditation,

Where you use in your mind,

You visualize the moon as a kind of symbol of enlightenment in your mind.

And what he would do is he would take that searchlight that is coming across his barrack and instead of seeing it as a annoyance or something that is preventing him from getting good night's sleep,

He would use that as a moment to practice meditation and use that searchlight as if it were the moon that he would visualize in his meditation practice.

Right.

In the book,

You wrote that he talks of,

Quote,

Viewing the guard's searchlights as the Buddha's sacred light.

That was really beautiful.

You also quote Dogen,

The 13th century founder of the Soto Zen school,

To pretty much express the attitude with which these Japanese American Buddhists practiced with determination,

Despite the deprivation they were living in.

Do you want to read that?

Sure.

So this is something from Dogen's text called Tenzoukyoku,

Instructions to the Cook.

It's a manual that he had for the head cook at the Zen monastery.

He was trying to give some guidance about what the mental outlook should be of a good Zen cook.

He says,

If you have only wild grasses with which to make a broth,

Do not disdain them.

If you have ingredients for a creamy soup,

Do not be delighted.

Where there is no attachment,

There can be no aversion.

Do not be careless with poor ingredients and do not depend on fine ingredients to do your work for you,

But work with everything with the same sincerity.

It's a beautiful condensed Dharma teaching about how to take poor ingredients.

Let's say you're in a camp where you don't have anything,

And yet that's your moment to put your Buddhist faith,

Your Buddhist practice to the test.

What people did was they didn't have the usual ingredients for Buddhist practice.

So Buddhist priests,

For example,

They didn't have their ojizu or rosary.

So what did they do?

They had a ration.

Once a week,

They'd get a piece of fruit,

And they'd take the peach pits and collect them so that they could make a Buddhist prayer bead.

People in these camps like Heart Mountain,

Wyoming,

It's in a desert type of environment,

They'd find desert wood.

They would use that and craft beautiful altars for their homes so that they could have a Buddhist altar to remind them of their faith.

They would take whatever ingredient,

Whether it's fine ingredients or poor ingredients,

As Dogen says,

And find a way to take that karmic situation and use that as the grist for practice.

You're listening to Tricycle's editor and publisher,

James Shaheen,

In conversation with Duncan Ryukon-Williams,

Author of American Sutra,

A story of faith and freedom in the Second World War.

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Now let's return to James Shaheen in conversation with Duncan Ryukon-Williams.

Duncan Ryukon-Williams You know,

A lot of people associate American Buddhism with convert Buddhists,

Americans who converted.

Yet,

You talk about a new American Buddhism being forged in the crucible of the internment camps.

Can you explain what you mean by that?

Duncan Ryukon-Williams So I think with any religion that comes to America,

There's always a process of adaptation,

Shifting,

Change.

And in the case of Buddhism,

We know that Buddhism itself,

Although it was founded and nurtured initially in India,

When it moved to China or Japan,

It always adapts and shifts and changes and is translated into the language of that place.

Sometimes it's literally the language,

The language changes from Sanskrit to Tibetan or something or to Chinese or Japanese.

But there's also ways in which it could be the teachings get adapted,

It could be that the rituals get adapted,

It could be that the organization or the sangha takes a slightly new form.

And so that process,

You know,

By the time Pearl Harbor hit,

I would say,

You know,

American Buddhism had been in formation for 70 years.

The Japanese had come to Hawaii and California,

You know,

In 1868.

And these temples were built in that late 19th century period.

And so they had been already adapting their Buddhism,

They had the second generation,

You know,

They're born in America,

They're American citizens,

They needed to transmit the Dharma to them,

And start translating that into English into ways that it would fit more into the American scheme.

So for example,

Meeting on Sunday,

That idea of the congregationalist model of American religious life,

It was not done in Japan,

But started happening even before the war.

You know,

During the camp days,

For example,

On the organizational level,

They started changing the name of their organization,

One of the biggest ones,

The so-called Jodo Shinshu tradition,

Their American organization was called the Buddhist Mission of North America,

BMNA.

And in 1944,

In one of the camps,

In Topaz camp,

They formally cut their ties to Japan and incorporated as a new American organization and changed their name to Buddhist Churches of America,

BCA.

And that use of the term churches,

Again,

Is a kind of,

I think it's a gesture towards that process of adapting to that new place.

So there were many kinds of adaptation,

Sometimes it's on the level of language that they would change it,

Sometimes it's on the level of,

You know,

If you were in one of these camps,

You know,

There are about five or six major schools or sects or denominations of Japanese Buddhism amongst the Japanese American population,

But the camp authorities would only give you a barrack to practice as a Buddhist temple in one of these camps.

In some camps,

What they did,

Because they were forced to,

You know,

Kind of come together as all of these Buddhist sects as one kind of unit,

They had to decide,

For example,

In chanting,

What would they chant?

You know,

In the Jodo Shinshu tradition,

They tended to chant an homage to Amida Buddha,

So they'd say,

Namu Amida Butsu.

In the Nichiren tradition,

They'd respect the Lotus Sutra,

So they'd chant Namu Denge,

Namu Myoho Denge Kyo.

In the Shingon tradition,

Namu Henjo Kongo Daish.

So they had these different chants,

But they just decided,

Okay,

If we're going to come together and have an intra-Buddhist thing,

Because they won't allow us to organize differently,

We were going to come together and we're going to just chant Namu Butsu,

Which means,

You know,

Homage to the Buddha.

So these type of small adaptations had to do with the fact of being in camp,

But it was also gesturing towards how do we create a new American Buddhism in which the American citizen second generation have a bigger role,

Put them in charge of Americanizing Buddhism,

Using more English in sermons,

In service books,

All of that kind of thing.

And so it was a process that began before the war,

But at a time when your loyalty is questioned,

At a time when you're told you can not be part of America,

For them,

They really wanted to find a way to show that you can be both Buddhist and American at the same time.

And so a lot of what happened in camp,

I call it the crystallization in the crucible of war,

But it's that pressure that people are feeling that they're being told,

You are not American.

And they are trying to find a way to prove that,

Yes,

I am a loyal American,

But I'm also a Buddhist.

I don't need to convert to Christianity.

I can remain a Buddhist,

Because the founders argued in the Constitution that America is a land of freedom or land of religious freedom.

And I think these people took that seriously.

Darrell Bock You know,

That brings us to a central theme in the book,

What it means to be an American.

I mean,

If this experience intensified the Americanization process,

It was also very sad in many ways,

Because although these people were overtly patriotic,

In fact,

Many of them fought in the armed forces,

They were still considered disloyal,

You use the word loyal,

And un-American.

So in the process of writing this book,

What conclusions did you come to about who is an American or what makes an American?

David Tenenbaum I have been thinking about this question about two different visions of what America can be.

There's one vision that says,

You know,

America is essentially a white Christian nation.

And that's based on a presumption that,

You know,

England became New England,

You know,

York became New York,

And that America is a land,

You know,

They use the word manifest destiny,

But a land ordained by God to bring the traditions of Europe and its Christianity.

And the American story is a westward story in which that civilization is,

You know,

Moves further west.

And so pioneers are always trailing westward and Lewis and Clark end up in or you know,

That kind of idea of like westward hoe,

Right?

So that's one kind of American story.

But for Asian people,

That's not their American story,

Because their journey to America is a movement eastward,

Right through Hawaii,

Seattle,

California,

And then further east.

And I think that there is a fundamental question that the book tries to raise,

Which is,

Is America a white Christian nation?

Or is it a nation made of people from multiple migrations and places?

For Latin America,

It's about a journey northward,

Right?

So it's a place where the American identity is enriched by these multiple peoples from multiple migrations with their culture,

Language,

Food,

Religions.

And that's what makes America America.

I think those two visions about both the multiplicity of ethnicity and immigrants,

And also the acknowledgement that they bring different religions with them,

And that the founders intended for America to be a land where people could freely exercise that.

To me,

That's a really important American story that Buddhists play a key role in actually enacting what the founders intended to make a more perfect union.

And so I think that's what I take away from what happened during the war,

And what these people endured to actually claim a place in America,

And by so doing,

Actually create an America that is multi-religious,

Multi-ethnic,

And pluralistic.

Right.

I'll read a few of the phrases I came across in the book that you use,

Phrases like a nation of becoming,

A widening circle of belonging,

Multiplicity over singularity,

Hybridity over purity,

And inclusivity over exclusivity.

That's a lot.

Is that in many ways also influenced by your own Buddhist practice?

Or is it more the constitution that I'm hearing?

Well,

I think the idea of becoming.

You know,

The Buddha taught that if you look at yourself,

Your identity,

It's not static,

And it's also not autonomous.

The Buddha taught that your self,

If you look carefully,

Is dynamically always shifting and changing,

But also that what we think of as ourselves is best understood as being interconnected with everything else,

Both in terms of space and time.

Right.

So if we apply that same logic to what is America,

What is American identity,

I think the Buddhist perspective is to say that America is also a land that is constantly becoming,

Dynamically changing,

And not a static set thing of a nostalgic past.

Right.

And that it's not about some kind of self-contained pure idea,

But that it's interconnected with everything else.

And it's especially a place where that's in fact become so clear that Americans are interdependent with many corners of the world.

And so I think that's a vision,

That's a Buddhist vision about what is America.

And it's one that I think in these times as well,

We might well consider what do Buddhists bring to the table in our national conversations about American belonging?

You know,

I'd like to bring this to the present for a moment.

Many people are unaware of the gravity of what happened back then,

The chilling accounts of arrest,

Of humiliation,

Of expropriation of property,

They all sound like they come from another world.

Yet many of us have relatives who watch this happen,

My own relatives in Southern California included.

Do you ever wonder whether this can happen again?

Whether we remain vulnerable?

Have we learned our lesson?

If you consider the social and political climate today,

These issues are once again relevant.

Who is an American?

What makes an American?

Is somebody more American than somebody else?

You must have thought of these things while writing this.

You know,

It's certainly the case that in our times,

We have a lot of rhetoric about walls and about separating and distinctions about favored nations for immigration and you know,

Nations that get talked about in negative ways.

So therefore,

It's certainly reminiscent of these earlier,

You know,

World War II and before this earlier history of exclusion.

You know,

I think that one of the more hopeful signs,

Though,

Is that you have these people,

For example,

Japanese Americans,

The people that did stand up for them,

They recalled them with admiration and appreciation.

And I think in turn,

Japanese American community members have often been the first to support whether it's these issues around the southern border and immigration separation.

There was a proposal to build one of those family detention centers for those separated families on the southern border in Arkansas,

Not far,

A few miles,

In fact,

From the Japanese American camp from World War II.

And that was something,

An issue that Japanese Americans got very involved with and vocal about.

And when the travel ban,

These ideas kind of excluding a certain group of people focused on their religion and in some ways their race and national origin,

Too,

Japanese Americans were one of the first that spoke up.

One of the most moving stories for me,

Though,

Was right after 9-11.

I was speaking with an imam who served the Islamic mosque in Honolulu.

And he said the day after 9-11,

This elderly lady who turned out to be about 91 years old,

She was a member of the Japanese American Buddhist temple,

She would turn up in the evenings at the front door of the mosque.

And he asked her what,

Hello,

What are you doing?

And she was like,

Oh,

I'm here to make sure nothing bad happens to the mosque.

And she recalled that during World War II,

There were cases of people shooting up the Buddhist temples,

Arson,

Vandalism,

Graffiti placed on all of these temples and Buddhist symbols.

And she was like,

I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen.

And of course,

He was on the one hand so moved and gratified that she was there.

Because again,

To have somebody from outside the community who has no relationship to Islam or those people that are coming to support them,

He found that moving while at the same time thinking like,

I don't know what a 90 some year old Japanese American lady is going to do to fend off anybody who's actually come to attack the mosque.

But I think it was moving to him.

And I think that's the kind of alliance or connections that people can have of when we have different faiths and backgrounds and so forth,

And you're in a moment where there's exclusions,

Whether it's through who can even come into the country or once they're in the country,

They face a certain kind of like,

Either second class citizenship,

Or just outright hostility,

Who is going to be there to lend their voice to help support those who are being told,

You can't belong here.

That's a wonderful story.

I'd like you to read a quote that I found pretty stunning by N.

Yogan Senzaki.

He was a revered Soto Zen priest and in 1945,

When he realized his release was imminent,

He wrote a poem.

Would you mind reading that?

Sure.

N.

Yogan Senzaki was a Rinzai Zen priest,

But he was in the camp at Heart Mountain and upon his release,

He writes a poem that I think allows us to reflect.

He says,

Land of liberty,

People of independence,

The constitution is beautiful.

It blooms like the spring flower.

It is the scripture by itself.

No foreign book can surpass it.

Like the baby Buddha,

Each of the people should point to heaven and earth and say,

America is the country of righteousness.

Yeah,

I say stunning because how could he write that after having been imprisoned through the course of the war?

You know,

I think these people maintain their faith in Buddhism,

But equally maintained their faith in America.

That the promise of America and what the constitution,

Including due process,

Including religious freedom,

All the principles of the constitution,

I think they believed that it was something that wasn't just on a piece of paper,

But something that had to be enacted.

Just like for somebody like Nogensensaki,

Buddhism was not something that was just on paper,

Written in a sutra somewhere.

He knew that to truly transmit the Dharma,

To truly practice the Buddhist way,

You needed to take the words that were in those sutras and actualize them,

Manifest them,

Make them real,

Even in the most difficult of circumstances.

And I think he knew also that the words in the constitution,

The ideals laid out there,

Were also something that is not made real,

Isn't actualized and manifest unless people live it.

And so his declaration that despite the interment,

In fact,

Because of it,

He is as ever committed to finding a place for himself,

Finding a place for Buddhism in America.

I think that's captured by this poem.

Well,

With that,

I think we can close.

Thank you so much,

Duncan Williams,

For joining us.

Thank you,

James.

You've been listening to Duncan Ryukon Williams discuss his new book,

American Sutra,

A story of faith and freedom in the Second World War.

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