Compassion Becomes Passion
When a simple gift of a quilt morphs into IKIGAI (life's purpose)
As I read Satsuki Ina’s memoir The Poet and the Silk Girl, I suddenly saw where the Japanese cultural trait of gaman (to endure) turned inside out to become the American trait of protest. Like me, Ina was raised by her parents to not speak about shameful moments in one’s life. The four-year incarceration of Ina’s parents (both American citizens) by the US government would have remained secret if it were not for Ina’s curiosity about a tattered quilt her mother refused to throw out.
…the unexpected kindness of a stranger that sustained my mother for years after her incarceration. She told me about the “church ladies” from the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) who would come to the fence to toss fresh fruits and vegetables over to prisoners every week. One day, a woman, possibly noticing that my mother was pregnant, called to her to come closer. Then, with enormous strength, the woman heaved a beautiful handmade quilt over the fence. When my mother picked it up, the woman smiled and said, “I hope this helps.”
A lifetime later, when my mother was ill and failing, the familiar quilt, now worn and ratty, lay on her bed. I suggested we replace it with a new blanket, but she refused. I knew the story about how it had come to belong to her, but I was surprised by the intensity of her refusal. When I asked her what the blanket meant to her, she said softly, clutching it in her hand, “This blanket helped me to remember that someone outside cared.” I realized, in that moment the healing power of the compassionate witness, someone whose presence countered the dehumanizing narrative imposed on a victim of trauma. Someone cared.
Ina’s parents were born in America but they both had elementary school educations in Japan, making them Kibei. When times were good, their bilingual, bicultural backgrounds were a great asset. Ina’s mother was selected out of thousands of young women to represent the Japanese silk industry at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition.
But when times were bad, Ina’s parents were cursed. Targets of suspicion from both sides. The Depression had made people desperate and nationalism was rampant. The Japanese considered Ina’s parents Gaijin (outsiders from America) while whites and fellow American-born Japanese (Nisei) thought they were enemy spies. Can you imagine what it felt like to be rejected, not only by one’s country of birth but also by one’s ancestors’ country?
Two months after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 forced the Japanese American community on the West Coast into ten remote concentration camps. People like Ina’s parents were confused when they were taken away. Surely our American citizenship will protect us. But they were wrong. The young couple was caught in the middle of an M. C. Escher lithograph-like world. Inside prison, it no longer mattered which way one ran on stairs that climb up to the bottom or down to the top. There was no longer any citizen or alien, up or down, right or wrong, loyal or disloyal. Just trying to survive in such a convoluted world made the young man and woman delusional and believe they had some say in their lives.
Ina’s incredible memoir uses the letters her parents wrote to each other from separate detention centers to show how two ordinary newlyweds in love ended up labeled as dangerous enemies of the state, condemned to four years of incarceration, separated for months at a time, “voluntarily” stripped of their American citizenship, and almost deported to a war-devastated country with their two toddler children born in prison - Satsuki Ina and her older brother Kiyoshi. Ina’s documentation of files from the FBI, Department of Justice and many government officials support this unbelievable house of cards constructed to justify the imprisonment of this young family. Who needs to read dystopian literature when you can find true stories like this?
Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have learned from past experience. This is a bitter pill we have to swallow. Over the course of human history, there has been and will continue to be scapegoating, injustice and cruelty towards people who look different from the mainstream. Just look around today and you will see government authorities throwing out phrases like “deportation of illegal immigrants”, “removal of American birthright citizenship” and “deterrence of unauthorized immigration by detention” as ICE raids increase in major cities.
ProPublica and the Texas Tribune reported less than half of the approximately 8,200 people arrested (by ICE) from Jan. 20 (2025) through Feb. 2, so far have criminal convictions.
“It was just a regular morning,” said Loreal Duran from Echo Park in Los Angeles, describing her family’s before-school rush to get the kids out the door and loaded into the car.
But on the morning in question, Jan. 23, as her husband fastened their two young children into their seats, an immigration officer walked up, asking Loreal to show identification. “As he got closer to the car, he saw my husband, and basically, he just went around to the other side to grab my husband out of the car and take him away.”
Giovanni Duran, 42, came to California from El Salvador without federal authorization when he was 2 years old, brought by his family. He worked as a busser in a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles, Loreal said. Duran is now being held in the Adelanto detention facility, run by a private company under contract to ICE, awaiting deportation to a country he doesn’t know.
But even if I know such actions are wrong, what can I do? As one person, my opinions have no effect on the current political situation. Complaining only aggravates everyone. Defying the authorities might get me in trouble or worse, lose my job and thrown in jail myself.
When I first heard about Satsuki Ina’s public protests about the treatment of immigrants coming in at the Southern border, I felt uncomfortable. We shouldn’t be protesting against the authorities. It’s not my business to get involved in other people’s problems. But Ina is older than I am, and had learned a valuable lesson I was only beginning to understand.
Ina’s contact with the detained immigrants at the Southern border was in direct correlation with the trauma she and her parents suffered in an American concentration camp. While her parents were helpless in the face of the war hysteria and the mass incarceration because they happened to have faces that looked like those of the enemy, Ina realized that the church lady had given her mother a powerful weapon.
The quilt is not just bedding. It is evidence of the woman’s devotion to community. The interlocking design. The repeating pattern. The bits of fabric from someone’s clothing - all remind us how we are all part of a community. The quilt is an embodiment of the greater Truth. We are all connected to each other and owe each other respect and compassion. A simple quilt couldn’t change the fact of Ina’s family incarceration and the separation of Ina’s parents, but it provided great comfort while they slept.
Satsuki Ina knew her IKIGAI, her purpose in life, was to deal with her parents’ trauma (and that of the Japanese American community). Her fascinating memoir documents her long journey of self-discovery. Once she uncovered the layers of secrets her parents kept, she realized she had to do something with that knowledge.
It wasn’t enough to just uncover her mother and father’s stories. Ina and her supporters went down to the immigrant detention centers, not for political reasons, but to contact the detained immigrants, tie hand-folded senbazuru origami cranes on the fence and show the imprisoned women and children that someone outside cared. Her goal was to be a “compassionate witness” to help heal their wounds of rejection, just as the church lady did for her mother.
In her memoir, Ina recounts her surprise when she met with women and children who had just been released after weeks or months of incarceration. After her eighty-year-old brother Kiyoshi talked about being born in prison and growing up without his father for a significant part of their four-year imprisonment, one of the immigrant mothers, carrying a toddler in her arms, stood up to speak:
Black strands fell from the rubber band holding her hair back; her clothes were rumpled and faded, and tears streamed down her face. As she spoke, the translator struggled to keep her own composure. “I have just spent four months in a terrible place,” she said. “I feared for my children. We were hungry and afraid every day. When I hear that you were in prison for years, my heart aches for you. I cannot imagine your suffering.”
Compassionate witnessing can occur both ways, across time, across generations, across language barriers. Even between those who are imprisoned and those of us who are free. Satsuki Ina described the healing they all felt as they shared their stories.
So too did I realize that I couldn’t just write about my own family history or run away during these difficult times and go live overseas as I’ve been tempted to do. It would be easy for me to escape to Japan, find a nice apartment in Tokyo, enjoy eating wonderful food and just write. But after reading Ina’s memoir, I knew I couldn’t be so selfish.
I have to do my part to improve my society. American society. In this increasingly uncomfortable enclave getting pressed on all sides by frightening forces, I needed to act, not just write. In my own small way, I was going to have to show up and be a compassionate witness for people who happen to be on the wrong side of the fence.
