I’ve spent the last three days reading dense scholarly articles on emigration from Meiji Japan, studying online photographs (the indignity of newly arrived internees at Poston stuffing their mattresses from huge piles of straw) and bland (and therefore even more infuriating) administrivia from the War Relocation Authority, material from the collections donated to Dr. Grace Yeh at Cal Poly–the most memorable there include photos of Keith Sanbonmatsu’s parents, he so handsome and she so radiant, and a wartime suitcase that reads S. KOBARA in white letters–tracing family relationships, following, through the census, family movements, and finding passenger manifests that show the date, port of arrival, sometimes the home village in Nagoshima and the ship’s name of the ancestors of my high school friends and, more recently, my students. They have been long, long days and I had to stop because 62-year-old eyes can take only so much. So I was beginning to feel a little sorry for myself. Then, happily, I found just now and am stealing without shame, this photo of the Nakanos at this year’s SLO Obon.

Oh.

Of course. This is for them.