Children of Change: A Spiritual Pilgrimage

By Amrit

This is the story of Amrit`s spiritual journey from America to Japan and the Himalayan reaches of India, and finally to The Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, and Auroville.

Surveying this panorama of life-from birth in the US Internment Camps through prejudices endured in child-hood, leading to maturation of youthful idealism

• Language: English
• Publisher: PRISMA
• Release date: Apr 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9788195730155

Book preview

PREFACE

From a more universal outlook, the life described herein is merely a grain of sand on a vast beach fronting an even greater expanse of seas unfathomed and un-seen. Yet without the grain of sand, there is no beach, and without the beach, there is no demarcation of immensity. Our lives are but fragments of infinity—each living his own reality encapsulated and circumscribed by circumstance of background, culture and creed—which at the same time together manifest the totality of existence.

This narrative represents but one of many perspectives, both inner and outer, particularly regarding events in Auroville. Each life has its own story to tell, its own level of reality and truth, and though apparently oft in mutual contradiction, from a higher stream of consciousness, all are pieces of the puzzle called life, and part of a more comprehensive harmony. Even though some statements subsequently to be articulated may appear overly trenchant and forceful, this in no way negates the realities experienced by others, for in the end, everything in the Universe has its place and meaning within the context of individual and collective evolution.

If the sensibilities of others have been pained by some of the observations to follow, this was neither intentional nor meant to deny the validity and significance of experiences through which each grows, evolves and progresses. All participate, willingly or not, in this enormous evolutionary élan towards the Light, like seedling shoots seeking the sun. Some are rapid and one-pointed in focused action, while others take longer to break barriers of resistance, lingering and savoring the richness of good and evil, the lighter and darker shades of life—all ultimately spiraling upwards to a luminous epiphany.

Finally, I can only bow down in profound gratitude before the radiance of the Divine Presence embodied by my Teachers, and by the countless beings friendly and unfriendly, who have aided in this journey from ignorance and obscurity to self-knowledge and illumination, to the final transformations of Truth and Light, Bliss and Immortality that are our birthright.

May all be graced and blessed by the Power of Equanimity, and by the Light rapturing us into Oneness and Love.

—Amritanandanath

THE CHILDREN OF CHANGE

A Spiritual Pilgrimage

Prologue

Gion shooja no kane no koe, shogyoo mujoo no hibiki ari. Sarasooju no hana no iro, jooshahissui no kotowari wo arawasu.....

The bell of the Temple of Gion tolls the Impermanence of all things. As the flower fades, so do all things pass away.....

Preamble to the Japanese Epic, The Tale of the Heike

Such is the Buddhist conception of a world whose characteristic attribute is Impermanence. This sensibility of evanescence influences and animates much of Japanese literature and art, popularly poeticizing what was originally the austere search of the Buddha for Liberation from the Cycle of Birth and Death. Mono-no-Aware—the Impermanence of All Things—became one of the primary aesthetic principles driving and motivating the Japanese ethos that "all life is art." Everything has possible aesthetic value, even pathos and tragedy, and if nothing is permanent, basically all life is potentially tragic. And in such inevitable circumstances, stoic beauty accrues added significance as a source of an ascetically chaste and muted joy, simple and shorn of all ornament. But beyond pure aestheticism is the abiding reality of the impermanence afflicting our world, spurring the everlasting quest for Enlightenment and Liberation.

Leaves drifting to earth slowly one by one in the autumn air; the lonely caw of a crow on a barren branch in winter; the dying embers of a fire at night, sparks floating and swallowed by darkness: these are all images of Mono-no-Aware signifying the futility, pathos and vanity of human existence on this earth. Yet these poetic metaphors point to more than just impermanence and consequent meaninglessness. As captured in the paintings Wind from the Sea and Christina’s World of Andrew Wyeth and Basho’s Haiku poem Voice of the Cicada, such flashes of stilled motion—suspended in timelessness—jolt the consciousness into the vast and everlasting silence underlying the constant rumor and surface movement of life. The sense of Impermanence awakens seeking for Eternity.

Christina’s World

by Andrew Wyeth

In this way does "Mono-no-Aware" stir and support the pensive penchant to the 2nd great principle of Japanese aesthetics, Sabi-Wabi or Solitude: quiet aloneness tinged with a serene but sad longing instigated by the perception of both Imperfection and Impermanence—a state closely correlated with my own inner reality. Like Yugen, mysterious, subtle, unspoken and unseen, this shadow of solitary discontent pursued and dogged each step, continuously moving and murmuring like a subterranean stream softly yet insistently reminding of deeper past origins.

This sense of disquiet gradually and gently drew me inwards to another space and time. Roused by these rumblings of unease, are we solitary strangers in a strange land—homesick in longing for roots beyond the transitory nature of existence. Yet within this very heart of discontent was an inimitable and superlative joy, at times suddenly and spontaneously rising to the surface spreading its bubbles of bright luminosity. It was as if the ecstatic smile of God regarded all with equal favor, and in such moments, did solitude take on the aura of a quiet and self-possessed happiness, existing in and of itself.

It is this contradiction between the human condition and the profound joy inexplicably welling up from some essential source, that drove my longing for resolution. And birth into an American Concentration Camp—the headlong and fateful fall into a virtual Veil of Tears—only compounded this increasingly profound and fathomless dis-ease. In the end, it is this ever present and fundamental dissatisfaction—further fortified by the perception of a dim light shining at the end of a dark tunnel—that inevitably incites the human heart in its quest for the meaning of life, the Holy Grail of ancient legend.

Chapter I

THE EARLY YEARS

THE CAMPS

Pursuant to the provisions of Public Proclamations Nos 1 and 2, this Headquarters, dated March 2, 1942, and March 16, 1942, respectively, it is hereby ordered that from and after 12 o’clock noon, P.W.T., of Monday May 11, 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien, be excluded from that portion of Military Area No 1 described as follows....."

A Jap’s a Jap—it makes no difference whether he is an American citizen or not.

General John L. DeWitt in charge of carrying out the Exclusion Order

Civilian Exclusion Order

Howard Shoji Iriyama January 1944, Gila River Camp

I was born in an American Concentration Camp, euphemistically termed a Relocation Center. This was in October 1943, almost two years after Pearl Harbor. Of course, it could have been worse, like birth into a German equivalent, Auschwitz for example. Such a Final Solution would have obviously obviated any necessity for further controversy and discussion—whereas in America, we have at least survived to talk about it, a rather gratifying state of affairs. Even though we are in full appreciation of the hesitation to eradicate us fully, for the United States of America—the shining knight of democratic ideals fighting Fascism in a battle against tyranny and injustice—these actions were still an irreconcilable incongruity in utter contravention of its own professed visionary aims.

In 1942, my father, a US citizen of Japanese origin, and my mother, born in Japan, along with the rest of our family, were interned in the Gila River Relocation Center in the state of Arizona. We were incarcerated—with approximately 120,000 others of Japanese origin, two-thirds of whom were US citizens—in one of ten Camps spread throughout the Continental US. These were situated mostly in isolated and inhospitable areas, or in our case, a barren Arizonan desert—ironically on an Indian reservation, a precursor to our present stigma.

To be imprisoned for your ethnic origins was understandable and acceptable at the time, given the attitudes and values prevalent in the years before the World War. Racism was considered natural and normal, and belonging to the white race the premier condition, preferred as second to none. After all, colonialism had reached its zenith, and Hitler had already embarked upon his wholesale extermination of the Jewish race—and of all others of non-Germanic origin (defined dubiously as non-Aryan) had he succeeded. Today his example is being faithfully emulated under the popularly sanitized appellation ethnic cleansing (like the euphonic relocation). Nonetheless, some progress has indeed been made, with some notable relapses in recent times. At least now in polite society we feel guiltier about it than previously when such attitudes were the taken for granted norm.

My family was relocated into a Relocation Center—the epithet favored over the more emotionally charged Concentration Camp, a descriptive label shunned because of its negative connotations outrageously implying similarity to our Nazi antagonists. Dislodged, dispossessed and deprived of rights and property, but not quite extirpated, we still proudly remained citizens of these United States of America—our dignity proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the Constitution.

Nevertheless, despite the accepted euphemism, President Roosevelt, himself a party to the internment, did forthrightly employ the term, Concentration Camps, violating the general reluctance to call a spade a spade. In the same way, rather than being designated candidly a US citizen in the Exclusion Order, my father was termed a Non-Alien like about 75,000 other Japanese-Americans—to avoid admitting to the embarrassing proposition of imprisoning actual citizens solely according to race without due process of law. Euphemisms are useful to avert confronting unpleasant truths.

Rounded up for Internment

Behind Barbed Wire

Notwithstanding the barbed wire and gun towers surrounding the Camp barracks—remarkably reminiscent of similar enclosures propagated by less benevolent regimes the world over—one apparent advantage was that the machine guns and barbed wire kept the mobs out and us in. Called protective custody, ostensibly this was to ensure our well-being and happiness, except for the fact that the guns were pointed inwards towards us, not outwards—a nicety overlooked and ignored by our benefactors.

The Japanese Americans generally exempt from the internment were mostly those living in Hawaii. The largest single ethnic group comprising more than one-third of the Hawaiian population—a fact making mass imprisonment not only unlikely, but impossible because of the economic implications—they experienced a situation entirely different from their continental brothers. On mainland America, racism was blatant and unabashed, whereas in Hawaii, though also very evident, was still more muted and undefined, given their overwhelming presence in all aspects of Hawaiian life. Some Hawaiian Japanese, until they actually saw the Camps themselves, did not believe they existed.

It has always been a question why, when the mainland Japanese Americans were interned, the more numerous Hawaiians were not, Hawaii being the area directly attacked by Japan on Pearl Harbor Day. The answer aside from practical considerations could only be the racism much more overt and prevalent on the West Coast. The fact that not a single act of espionage was found to have been committed throughout the course of the War by any Japanese American, either immigrant or citizen, made a mockery of the exaggerated rumors, fear and hysterical paranoia possessing all levels of American society, from newspapers and journalists to politicians, the public and even the military, with only a very few notable and laudable exceptions.

At all events, the racial hysteria pervading the country was not conducive to good will and tolerance, and we were suspected of traitorous activities due to our slanted eyelids and inscrutable countenances—unlike Americans of German and Italian extraction who naturally blended into the primarily White population. This, again, was not particularly unusual, as generally we human beings tend to judge each other by appearance. If we look different, we are different, especially if identified with any specific ethnic or racial group.

Since Japanese look alike, they must behave alike, a simple proposition making it so much easier to avoid unnecessary mental cogitation. Do not questionably narrow eyes, short stature (at the time), yellow skin and buckteeth (a misnomer and misperception), and the unnerving habit of smiling even under the most ridiculous of circumstances—the typical racially profiled parody—all automatically bespeak characteristics of cunning and subterfuge? Ergo, we were accused of fifth-column activities, suspicions that on official investigation almost 50 years later were found to have no basis in fact. Truth is an irrelevant irritation for righteous ignorance—the distressing characteristic of judgmental narrow mindedness.

Of course, when Caucasians first entered Japan, the compliment was returned. The Japanese could not tell the difference either. The newcomers all looked, behaved and smelled the same, mostly with flaming red hair, big noses, and the palest of skins, as portrayed in the art of the time. Westerners were not considered terribly clean, in fact so offensive to the olfactory organ that they were requested to stay with the pigs.

In European countries at the time, baths were considered unhealthy, thus the smell and subsequent origin of French perfume. Napoleon may have appreciated the fragrance of the unwashed human body—referring to the story when Napoleon, returning from war, wrote to Josephine beforehand, "I’m coming, don’t take a bath!" But how could the Japanese possibly fathom the rationale behind bodily dirt and smell, an impure state closest to being undivine according to their general view of things—even a violation of their deeply held Shinto religious beliefs.

Japanese Art Caricature of Westerners

To be frank and fair, the Japanese themselves are afflicted as well by this characteristic human proclivity to categorical assumptions. The worst a Japanese can say of another is chigatte iru, roughly translated as he’s different! This is a problematical condition which fortunately or unfortunately applies in some way or another to all of us—making judgment of each other arbitrary and nonsensical. Difference is viewed as dangerous, strange and threatening. As a general observation, prejudices are commonly human and stereotyping universal—a result of ethnic human diversity, which can be either despised or celebrated, according to our choice.

Another positive advantage for society at large was that the Camps were situated in inaccessible areas, in mountainous tracts and desert wastelands, far from ordinary human habitation. As such, they could pose no annoying reminder of these slight blemishes on the American Way of Life which we all cherish and value. Did not so many sacrifice their lives in the great conflagration we call World War II to preserve these very rights and freedoms, which are the cornerstones of our American social order, its very raison d’etre?

To maintain equanimity and the illusion of rectitude, better to sequester the truth than to be inconvenienced and discomfited by it. Out of sight, out of mind. Propaganda and prejudice thrive on lies, misconceptions and self-satisfied preconceptions— essentially ignorance allying with malevolent ill-will in total denial of conscience and humanity. In the face of such a tidal wave of heinous hatred, vehement and unreasoning, we could only stand mute—praying one day the storm would pass, and the sunny reality of more subtle, nuanced and balanced perceptions, kinder and gentler, would again appear to grace the hearts of the American people.

As a factor of incalculable value, this was a golden opportunity as well to demonstrate our loyalty and prove our detractors wrong, the not to be lost chance of a lifetime. While their families languished behind barbed wire, the Japanese-Americans of the 442nd—the most decorated American regiment in US military history—courageously fought and died for these same freedoms denied their own people. The 442nd accounted for 18,143 awards, including 8 Presidential Unit Citations, 21 Medals of Honor, 9,486 Purple Hearts, 560 Silver Stars, 4,000 Bronze Stars, and the Congressional Gold Medal, among many others—with an official casualty rate of 93%, in reality 314% informally derived from the 9,486 Purple Hearts divided by the actual approximately 3,000 fighting personnel.

Given their enormous casualty rate based on exemplary self-sacrifice and bravery, this is indeed poetic justice in reverse, with neither poetry nor justice involved. Though undoubtedly, everything can be utilized as a springboard for progress, even the most deleterious of situations, unfortunately this is mainly in retrospect: while undergoing pain and injustice, pain is pain, and injustice is injustice, and no amount of consolation and comprehension can alleviate it.

The 442nd Japanese-American Regiment

However, by summoning our utmost resources of positivity to extract at least some beneficial wisdom out of unmitigated disaster, we can concede the inestimable value of the entire exercise in accelerating our integration into the mainstream of American society. The internment—this forcible removable from our homes; the loss of pride and property gained through half a century of hard labor; this total disruption of security and sanity—led to a dissolution of the Japanese communities formerly clustered along the US West Coast, eventually scattering us throughout the width and breadth of our Continental America.

This was a misfortune (or good fortune depending on the outlook) of unforetold consequences. In one blow, the internment shattered our Japanese ghettos and the mentality so associated, as well as straining the traditional family and value system. Ghettos generally assist the identification and targeting of ethnic groups, magnifying perceived differences utilized to justify prejudice. Ironically for some years, the Camps created the greatest ghetto of them all, in order to de-ghettoize us, a bit like removing a heart to cure heart disease.

This effective diaspora and dislocation, initially disconcerting and disturbing, was nonetheless one of the factors facilitating over time a gradual change in attitude and greater acceptance. Along with the reputed valor of the 442nd—many of whom made the ultimate sacrifice for rights won literally through blood, sweat and tears— by immolating life, liberty and our pursuit of happiness on the altar of human bigotry, we proved our loyalty and finally attained our present status as citizens worthy of this great democracy called the United States of America.

The Washington DC Japanese American National Monument

Commemorated on 9th November 2000

The walls of prejudice with its plethora of discriminatory laws began to crumble, and to our great relief, we were ushered into the portals of the American Dream—becoming as successful and materialistic as everyone else. We began to lose our distinctive cultural identity as Japanese, but achieved a new one as full-fledged Americans. Nothing lost, nothing gained.

Prejudices die hard, and this was a process of change, not immediate but gradual, spanning several decades, concomitant with a general evolution occurring all over the world. World War II ended the old colonial order and attendant supremacy of the White race, heralding in turn the rise of non-White nationalism—a definite factor underlying the inexorable weakening of racist sentiment in a world increasingly diverse and inhospitable to traditional prejudices. Reparation for injustices endured would come only about 45 years later. And by the time innocence was established and justice partially restored, many were already dead and gone. Perhaps a lesson for future generations, official vindication was too late for many victims of this historical wrong. But better late than never.

Early Experiences

Colorado

Colorado Home

1946

Howard & Father

My first recollections were not of the Camps, but of the following period from about 1944-46 when we were again relocated, this time to Colorado. After almost two years of internment, we were finally permitted to leave the barbed wire confines of the Camps, free to farm but not to return to our erstwhile homes in California. Colorado’s Governor, Ralph Carr, exceptionally was the only political personage of stature in the US first to demonstrate the tolerance and goodwill to take us in as settlers: both the Nisei, second generation Japanese born in the US and the Issei, originally from Japan.

The Nisei like my father were automatically citizens by birth, whereas the Issei, first generation Japanese immigrants like my mother, were prohibited at the time from gaining US citizenship due to racially motivated law. Because non-White immigrants were denied the possibility of citizenship, it was only from 1952 with the abrogation of legal discrimination, was my mother, in the US since the age of five, able to gain citizenship. Given the circumstances, that Governor Ralph Carr not only had the rare integrity to reject the internment as unconstitutional, but also the color-blind generosity of character to accept both the Nisei and Issei as residents of his state, was a remarkably laudable stance. And for this, he has earned our undying gratitude—and indeed, fortified his status before all Eternity. Goodness of heart and integrity of conduct cannot but leave its mark.

My impressions from those days are fleeting like the clouds, yet deep like the rains that seep into the earth, permeating it with its moisture—a large central wooden living room heated by an iron potbellied stove; the fragrance of hot instant Postum, the fizz of Dr. Pepper; the strains of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas saturating that cold room with the crooning warmth and smoothness of his all-American voice. On our Colorado farm, strangely enough, German prisoners of war worked for us, ourselves exiles in our own land. By coincidence, over sixty years later, an elderly German gentleman approached my older brother on a tennis court in Oakland, California and introduced himself as a former German prisoner-of-war in Colorado. Immigrating back to the US, he remembered a Japanese-American family with two young boys playing in the barren dirt of a neighboring farm.

Guadalupe, California

In 1946, we were finally permitted to return to our former home in California, a small sleepy agricultural town on the West Coast near the treacherous beaches of Guadalupe. Memories of stumbling out of our luggage laden truck, relieved from the cramped days and hours spent in the journey home, were reminiscent of the migrants in John Steinbeck’s book The Grapes of Wrath. Climbing up stairs to our temporary room above a grocery store while tightly clutching a red metal plane as my only companion, I recalled seeing a fly trapped, then perishing inside the toy plane. That fly ensnared provoked childish curiosity, stirring vague recollections of our human predicament. For a child of three years, the oddest things would strike me as strange, though totally without mentation.

We moved for a couple of years into a ramshackle wooden hut by the railroad tracks which ran through the middle of Guadalupe. One day suddenly appeared a small bundle of warmth with its constant cries for milk, a strange apparition unexplained and un-understood: my younger brother. And on my first day at Kindergarten just before the age of five years, sitting alone, I watched with curious and wide-eyed indifference most of the children crying and shrieking for their mothers. Somehow this childish fuss—these human idiosyncrasies at play—seemed amusing and faintly fascinating. Everything, in fact, appeared curious and strange.

1955 Extended Family - Center Maternal Grandfather HY Minami, 2nd from Left Howard Shoji, 3rd from Left Elder Brother Ron Iwao, Sitting Next to Coffee Table Younger Brother Dan Teruo, Upper Right Father Noboru & Mother Toshiko Iriyama

These were trying days for the family, as well as for the entire Japanese-American community—uprooted for years, cast into hostile environments, losing almost everything. My grandfather, Henry Yaemon Minami, was among the very few able to maintain and hold onto at least a modicum of assets. With what remained, he tried to help others start their lives anew and through hard work regain self-respect and dignity.

Prior to the internment, grandfather was considered an original founder among others of the agricultural truck-farming industry in California, one of the only areas of work permitted to Japanese. Even though before the War, the Nisei as a group were educationally highly qualified compared to the general population, few, almost none, could find jobs in the chosen fields of their professions. Doctors and engineers were confined to fields and vegetable stalls, or to whatever private businesses that could be sustained.

Grandfather & Family Farm

Maternal Grandfather Henry Yaemon Grandmother Kuni Minami

Grandfather &Prince& Akihito 1953 US Visit

4th Degree 1955

3rd Degree 1970

Order of The Imperial Sacred Treasure

Awarded to Grandfather by Emperor & Japanese Government

My Parents

Father Noboru

Mother Toshiko

My parents labored hard, often back-breaking work, never mentioning their days in the Camps, never bemoaning their fate, for this was the Japanese way of "gambatte", to endure even the utmost pain without complaint. Shikata ga nai or that’s the way it is, what to do was the normal stoically fatalistic attitude. This was my father, always smiling, never complaining of difficulty or suffering, always industrious, simple in temperament and of unfailing good-will.

My father, Noboru Iriyama, was born in Orcutt near Santa Maria in 1912, his father first arriving in the US in the late 1880’s, one of the earlier Japanese in the country. Traveling back to Japan at the age of ten in 1922 with his parents, my father attended school in Japan until seventeen, when in 1929 he returned to reclaim his US citizenship and finish his high school education.

It was in Santa Maria, California that he began working in the agricultural enterprise founded by my maternal grandfather, at the same time becoming a star athlete in baseball as well as in track and field at Santa Maria High School. Athletics was in fact only a part-time pursuit, as my father had to work, and even without the required rigorous training, he still excelled in sports. His broad jump record at the regional King City Track Meet was maintained for several decades, and in baseball, his skill was great enough that he was scouted by the then Japanese Tokyo Giants baseball team, though he chose not to return to Japan.

My father was hard-working, intelligent yet uncomplicated and unaffected, mechanically dexterous, sunny in outlook and simple in needs and interests. His greatest joys were the hours spent in fishing at the local beaches, piers and rivers that abounded on California’s naturally scenic coastline, as well as time spent with close friends.

My mother, Toshiko, was the heart of our family, as most mothers are. Brought up since very early childhood in the US, she spoke impeccable English, without accent, something very unusual for an immigrant. And like so many immigrants, she embodied naturally many of the qualities of the former mother country: the Japanese sense of giri or duty and obligation, never to forget what we owe to one another; never to show wagamama or selfishness and egoism, a self-deprecating attitude that considered pride and boastfulness as vulgar and crude; generosity to a fault, to repay our debts even beyond what was expected; courtesy, politeness and refinement, the hallmarks of Japanese culture; honesty, integrity and kindness. And all this was not taught so much by word, as by example. We could see what they were, directly and without pretension.

To cite an instance, at about the age of seven, I was accustomed to take a few coins from my piggy bank—also supplemented with a nickel or dime impermissibly taken from my mother’s purse—to buy some sweets distributed to friends at school. I was vaguely aware that this was wrong to take anything without permission, even for good reason. One day, while playing outside an area where some family and friends were having dinner in a Chinese restaurant, I overheard my mother joking, He thinks I don’t know, but I know perfectly he’s taking a dime from my purse and buying sweets for his friends! I was mortified. I never did this again, and my mother never scolded or mentioned this incident to me directly, though I believe she understood I was nearby and overheard. Without any overt discussion, even as a child, I came to understand with greater clarity the distinctions of right and wrong.

Santa Maria

Elks Parade & Rodeo

After two years, we moved to another agricultural community called Santa Maria, about nine miles inland from Guadalupe, into an old wooden mansion—huge compared to our previous shack—on the outskirts of the town and formerly owned by the erstwhile Police Chief. Santa Maria was a place in transition from its frontier past—its vast cattle ranches and farms; its wooden boardwalks with the proud US flag unfurled in the center where Main and Broadway crossed; its cowboys strutting in gallon hats and spurred boots; its rodeos and parades. Now the city has grown into the normal modern retirement community it is today, with gleaming malls and tree lined streets, at least in parts, notwithstanding the larger areas now ghettoized into Hispanic neighborhoods.

Those were days of childhood remembrances: a small fruit orchard in our backyard, its trees laden with plums, nectarines, apricots and walnuts; a wide stretch of fields with vegetables farmed by our family; our Cocker Spaniels Duke and Patsy (later poisoned to death by some malevolent visitor); the hamsters, chinchillas, parakeets, horned toads, and ducks, a wide wild menagerie of pets to satisfy youthful curiosity and exuberance.

I fondly remember Duckie, the small duckling won at the County Fair. Every day on my return from school, she would waddle out to greet me by extending her neck straight out to be petted and fed, quacking contentedly. One day suddenly she was gone, no longer there to welcome me. It seems as was her wont, Duckie would greet the others in the family in the same manner, rushing out to be petted. Seeing my father in his car, she ran towards him and under the wheels, not understanding the danger the vehicle represented.

Prejudice

In this time of innocence, hints surfaced intermittently of a place not quite right, troubled by undercurrents of unease stirred by flashes of violence and brutality that afflict the adult world. The furtive glances, people stopping dead in the middle of the boardwalk to stare at someone curiously strange, alien and abnormal; the taunts from some as we passed in our car; the signboards in restaurants, trumpeting No Japs; my 5th grade teacher who vented his frustrations at myself, himself a veteran of the terrible conflict we call the Korean War; the Principle of Fairlawn Grammar School who in his prejudice could not accept that an Asian could excel, all this was observed but not yet grasped.

Stones were thrown at me by gangs of boys screaming Chink, Chink, Ching Chong Chinaman (obviously the difference between a Japanese and Chinese was not duly noted) or shouting Jap, Jap (correctly enunciated), laughing in derision; or the door slammed in my bewildered face with the words, Sorry, full, no room, referring to the Summer Camp my friends and myself were applying to enter. They, as White, were accepted, I was not.

Exceptionally, there were those of empathy and compassion, like the mother of my friend with whom I had planned to attend the Camp. She, upon learning of the refusal, immediately understood, and despite my own lack of comprehension, jumped into her car, asking me to wait. Returning an hour later, she firmly declared, You are going with my son... I was the only non-White at the Camp. Race and ethnic background always seemed to me irrelevant. What in the world did the color of your skin or race have anything to do with your worth? Evidently this sentiment was not equally shared by all.

Buddhism & Christianity

After moving to Santa Maria, my older brother and I were sent to the predominantly Japanese American Christ Methodist Church, mainly for social reasons, as no Buddhist Temple existed in the town. Such fraternal intercourse between the Japanese Buddhist and Christian communities was not particularly unusual, since dogmatic religious beliefs and strict philosophical ideas are not a naturally forceful part of the Japanese temperament.

The very nature of the language itself is ambiguity, fraught throughout with phrases such as it might be so or probably it’s like that, because to be too definite is to be impolite. In Japan, the Christian Fathers were often confounded with the typical expressions of faith, such as I think probably Christ was the Son of God, rather than "Christ IS the Son of God." In the West, to be clear is to be admired, whereas in the East, to be clear is to be rude. However, over succeeding generations in America, these finer distinctions were lost, resulting in less contact between Japanese Americans of Buddhist and Christian persuasions. Generally, the Buddhists tended to affirm and the Christians to disengage from ethnic heritage.

In early youth, with an increasingly religious bent of mind, both Christ and Buddha came to be regarded as my ideals. Often lost in reverie, dreaming of the times when they walked the earth, I envied those in the past fortunate enough to have lived in their presences. Yet unknown to a spontaneous young mind unencumbered by the ideological trappings of adulthood, sometimes simple aspirations of the soul tend to materialize and childhood dreams become reality.

Even though from a Buddhist background, in a moment of fervor at about the age of 10, I walked up to the Altar and was baptized. Immediately after, my mother asked, Why did you do that? I answered, What do you expect when you send me to a Christian Church? However, slowly it became gradually clear that my devotion was not so much to a church, organization or doctrine, but to the reality embodied by the special being we call the Christ or the Buddha. This realization was the beginning of apostasy, my rejection of religion as dogma.

Adolescent Idealism

Tom Paine

Adolescence initiated a period of profound changes and experiences pointing to a future still hidden in the mists of destiny. The Hungarian Revolution in 1956 against Soviet rule ignited an ardent and passionate flame within, the vision of a more just, free, fair and compassionate society, harking back to the ideals of the American Revolution with its Washingtons, Jeffersons, Ben Franklins, and Tom Paines.

Thomas Paine was my hero challenging doctrinaire religious narrowness, a Deist and freethinker sympathetic to Freemasonry whose spirit influenced no small number of the illustrious Forebears and Founders of our Republic. He was one of the great idealistic inspirations of the Revolution, a child of the Enlightenment like so many of the Founding Fathers, who were the great radicals of their time. Paine died in grief at the hands of an intolerant social order, misunderstood and maligned.

Howard

1956 Hungarian Revolution

Barely thirteen, I followed the eruption of the Hungarian Revolution with intense interest, and when it was crushed, wept that such beautiful aspirations for freedom could be so cruelly trampled upon and destroyed. Because of the past injustice of internment still fresh in memory, all these events instilled a strong sense of outrage against tyranny, oppression and the unfair treatment of others. And the shock was even greater when my favorite teacher commented, They’re all Commies, Reds, why help them! An inkling of the fanaticism and division caused by ideologies and belief systems, even among people of good intention and heart, began to dawn upon a mind yet unschooled in dogmatic thought.

Egypt

At the same time, we were asked to write an essay of our choice. I chose Egypt, drawing a picture of the Sphynx and Pyramids on the cover of the essay. My subject was the Egyptian period of history made famous by Akhnaton, the reformist Pharoah in the second millennium BC who worshiped the Sun as the Divine, radiating many hands, each holding the Ankh, Egypt’s most precious symbol of Immortality. The Ankh spontaneously touched my heart with an unspoken familiarity, recalling a faint memory of a knowledge past, personal and part of the very fabric of my being.

Akhnaton & Family in Aton’s Ray

Descent of White Light & Force

It was Akhnaton who founded Akhetaton—the gleaming new City of the Sun on the Horizon, the City of Dawn—briefly holding out the hope of a new light for humanity, crushed in its infancy. Little did I know that all this—along with certain interior indications in sleep—was a promise of what would one day concretely manifest.

The Force

In tandem with these youthful gropes towards light, were very clear experiences which seemed peculiar yet normal. Often at night, while half asleep, a Force would descend from above the head filling me with a sensibly material, milky white light, so dense and powerful that the body would freeze into an unaccustomed immobility. This Force flowed a river of light, energetic and dynamic, pure and smooth in texture like velvety satin felt as an inner sensation in the heart. This light was so bright, in fact, that I imagined my father coming into the pitch-black room, suddenly switching on the bedroom light, but with open eyes, the room was still dark. Strange, I thought, but did not dwell on it, since it seemed at the same time perfectly natural, as children are wont to feel and not think.

During the day, a sensation of something drilling into the forehead increased in intensity. Then too, suddenly I would pause, struck with the awareness of being in this body, as if it were some sort of receptacle separate and impersonal, wondering why I was in this body and not in another; and at other moments, the feeling of having dropped into this world on my head, slightly benumbed, of being a stranger in a strange world, longing to return to my origins—a nagging impression persistent since childhood. I experienced these states off and on over several years. It never occurred to me to speak of these happenings with others, as I assumed such were common to everyone, nothing out of the ordinary. This was in 1956, and unknown to me, a year pregnant with spiritual significance. I was 12, going on 13 years of age.

Sexuality

With the onset of puberty, an unexpected event occurred that determined my sexual orientation. One day, while reading a cowboy comic book, I was looking at an illustration of the hero captured and hung by his arms from a tree branch. An outlaw was pictured fiendishly tickling the bottom of the feet of the cowboy, who began to laugh