A Compassionate Calling …
Festival and memory
Among the joys of living in Chicago is that there is always something interesting to do or someplace interesting to go if you only look for it. This particular Sunday in August, my spouse Pat and I decided to go to the Ginza Holiday celebration at the Midwest Buddhist Temple in the Old Town area. The temple had been founded by Japanese Americans in 1944. And while the community today seems to appeal to an increasingly multi ethnic crowd, that heritage looks to be embedded in the culture of the group.
We arrived around noon and it seemed like a good idea to start off with a bit of lunch. While waiting to get bowls of tofu and vegetables over rice (which would turn out be delicious), I thought, for a moment, that I heard a familiar voice. I looked around and noticed an older woman. I realized that I did not know her, but something about her tone of voice and accent that sparked a memory I couldn’t quite retrieve.
After our meal, we spent some time looking at vendors’ booths. Naturally, we picked up a few things – a gift for a yoga teacher, a handmade candle, a couple of sake cups – I also got into a conversation with a member of the temple as I was looking at some of their books. He recommended a nice introduction to Jodo-Shinshu in America as I’m not as familiar with Pure Land Buddhism (especially in the U.S.) as I am with other expressions of Buddhism.
Despite the sun and humidity, we also found a little bit of shade so that we could enjoy one of the performances of a taiko drumming group that was on hand. Afterward, we made our way into the temple, itself.
Although it is Buddhist, it would not be an entirely unfamiliar space to someone whose frame of reference was Western Christianity. The reasons for this were explained by the minister who gave a talk on Buddhism and this particular temple’s history.
He told us about the Pure Land school and how it developed, not among the elite, but the poor – peasant and fisherman, male and female. He explained that this Buddhist tradition is not about seeking individual enlightenment, but we are here to help each other on our journeys.
He talked about how Japanese who came to America in the first part of the twentieth century tried to find ways of being less “alien” and how they sought acceptance. He explained about how this particular temple was founded in 1944 by people who’d been in concentration camps but were finally able to prove that they could find work - away from California - in another part of the country. Even then, the minister of this group, in those days, had to submit each sermon to the F.B.I. so that they could verify nothing “subversive” was being talked about.
He spoke about how some of the people who’d been in the concentration camps were actually born in the U.S. and were citizens. That hadn’t mattered. They had everything taken from them – homes, businesses, money, their rights.
As I sat on a comfortable pew in the beautiful, sacred space, the memory of a voice finally came to me.
When I was in seminary in the 1980’s here in Chicago, I got to know Kiyo Hashimoto. She was the secretary to the dean (she had a more prestigious title, but I could never remember it). Kiyo was caring, always helpful to anyone who needed it. She also had a mischievous side (she sometimes, under her breath, referred to a couple of quite arrogant and self-important faculty members as “the Gold Dust twins”). She could brighten the day of anyone entering the building (except for the officious). If you didn’t like Kiyo, there was something wrong with your soul.
She rarely attended weekly chapel services, but one Friday she did. During the time for sharing joys and concerns, she told the story of her own incarceration in a concentration camp in California. I don’t remember what the rest of the service was about, but it was much less compelling that what Kiyo had to say. She even told us that it was in the camp that she met Shigeru (“Shig”) whom she later married. No one had heard Kiyo’s story before and I don’t recall her ever talking about it again.
Over the years, Pat and I stayed in touch with Kiyo, mostly through holiday cards. I would look forward to her cards filled with the latest events which she might illustrate with little drawings. She passed away a few years ago, and now when Christmas comes, it always feels like there is something missing.
Someone as dear as Kiyo was placed in a concentration camp by the United States Government just for having Japanese ancestry. Back than, there was a war and the inexcusable rationalization was “national security.”
We are rounding up people again just to satisfy a need some of us have to hate others. There is no war. There is no excuse. It is prejudice, it is racism. I fear we have learned nothing.