Imprisoned Apart
   Louis Fiset
  1998 U of W Press Seattle WA USA
   ISBN: 0295976454


The World War II correspondence of an Issei Couple. Throughout the dark years of internment this loving couple continued to share their lives with almost daily letters during their separate imprisonments.

Iwao Matsushita's letters & documents first surfaced before the appreciative eyes of Roger Daniels who included portions in his work Asian America:Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850. Seattle; UWPress, 1988. Years later he enjoyed assisting Louis Fiset begin his labor of love.

In this simple, lovely paperback the life & times of two quiet, introspective pioneers come alive. They left the land of their birth in 1919 for America, arriving in the thriving, burgeoning town of Seattle where they too thrived within their community & their church. Until that fateful day when Iwao was snatched away shortly after Pearl Harbor.

Sent to an INS-run facility at Fort Missoula, Montana, he had no choice but to leave his devoted wife alone in Seattle, having to dispose of their property & take care of all manner of documents until she too was transported away, first to the fairgrounds at Puyallup, Washington, and then on to a camp at Minidoka, Idaho.

It was this wrenching experience, the first time this couple had been apart since their marriage just before they sailed, that prompted this wartime correspondence which was, of course, censored.

One of Iwao Matsushita's enduring legacies to his adopted city was his charter membership in Seattle's Camera Club & on the cover of Imprisoned Apart the Matsushitas are pictured with Nanaye holding her early portable box camera. Because of their keen sense of beauty & adventure we are gifted with an abundance of serene visions of Northwest volcanos, lakes & horse trails.

Reading between the lines, scrutinizing copies of handwritten letters in both English & then Japanese after the censors trained Japanese reading inspectors, is to see the life that unfolded for these two peaceful Christians. Iwao's poems, observations & bursts of efficiency only endear him. He invested his energies in all facets of camp activities, finding a degree of solace in the discovery of raw, pretty pebbles strewn all over the camp grounds. This started a general camp craft of honing, polishing & exhibiting that the all-male internees did to occupy themselves in their isolation.

Nanaye's letters reflect how lost she felt without her husband, she tried not to complain even when her health failed & she had no strength even to write. Sometimes the long silences between letters seems ominous until she writes again, apologetic & recovering. After they were reunited, Nanaye reassembled their home, yet her nerves & immune system never recovered & were fragile until she succumbed to cancer in the 1960s. Mr. Matsushita survived another 20 years, taking a slow world-tour ending in Japan for a final reunion with his remaining relatives & being honored there with the Fifth Order of Sacred Treasures.

Throughout his life, Mr. Matsushita had been teaching English to non-English speaking immigrants, becoming a pastoral speaker at his church, & was, in fact, mayor of the camp in Missoula for a while. Wherever Iwao Matsushita lived he became a pillar of his community & it was to the University of Washington's Far Eastern Library that he bequeathed the treasures of his life, a life fully lived during interesting & trying times.

The first part of Louis Fiset's Imprisoned Apart is the biography of Mr. & Mrs. Matsushita from their childhoods in a Japan, far away both in location & time to Mr. Matsushita's quiet death on December 17, 1979. There is a short section which explains censored, rerouted & objectionable wartime mail.

Then comes the actual correspondence, complete with facsimiles of both English & Japanese writing with examples of censorship. The final portion contains Louis Fiset's extensive Notes, Photo Credits & Index.

I shall always remember this stoic couple, people also to be included in that great generation at the halfway mark of this century. Mr. Matsushita taught the language of his adopted country to hundreds of people, lived a gentle Christian life & survived one of the worst things a society can do to its people. Well done!
(06/12/99)

Rebecca