This final piece is titled, “We Came Back for You”. It is a collage of our Tsuru for Solidarity collective experience during the Crystal City Pilgrimage and Protest at the Dilley, Texas, Family Residential Center in March 2019.

“We came back for you.”

by Satsuki Ina

We came back for you because…we know mass incarceration.

We came back for you because…we know family separation.

We came back for you because…we know deportation.

Because…we know barbed wire.

Because…we know indefinite detention.

We came back for you because…we care.

 ***

Some say, “it’s not our fight, it’s not the same”,

But we say incarceration of innocent people is inhumane,

we say mothers and children are not to blame.

Back in 1942, we disappeared.

Empty chairs in the classroom,

empty homes, shops, and farms.

America turned their backs on us.

No one marched, no one protested,

there were no petitions, there was no outrage.

Silence filled the empty spaces of our invisibility.

Silence was the scourge of our trauma.

Silence filled our hearts, our homes, our community so…

***

We came back to let you know that we will not forget you.

We came back to drum our message loud and clear.

We came back to hang paper cranes of hope and caring.

 ***

 We didn’t know there would be a healing for us.

We didn’t know that you would cry listening to our stories.

We didn’t know that the power of our shared voices

would be like shards ripping away the scabs of silence.

We didn’t know that the small act of folding a paper crane,

would speak to so many people in our community.

 ***

 In protest we chanted, we raised our fists,

 we sang in Spanish, “Decolores”,

we held hands, we sang in Japanese, “Kutsu ga Naru”,

 we sang for our grandmothers and grandfathers,

We sang for our mothers and fathers,

And we sang for you.

And in return you reached into your brown paper bag

and tied a string bracelet to my wrist,

You pushed a tortilla through the chain link fence,

You welcomed us wearing ties and hats,

You even saved a rock from the old swimming pool,

placed it in my hand, saying

You had been waiting years for me to come back.

Your big brown eyes stared up at me as tears welled up in mine.

Little child, you are me.  I am you.

We will not forget you.

We will not be silent.

We will come back for you.

And we will bring others until you are free!

(copyright 2019, Satsuki Ina)