Veterans Day ... Papa, Tatay, and the Library of Congress

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, two weeks ago I had the pleasure and honor of reading my poems at the Library of Congress in a symposium honoring "Unsung Heroes: Asian Pacific American Heroism in WWII." This kind of recognition in Washington, DC, has been long needed and comes at an opportune historical moment, with Congress's recent passage of reparation one-time payments to the Filipino soldiers of WWII who were stripped, immediately after the war, of the veterans' benefits FDR promised them. At that event, I had the honor of meeting retired General Antonio Taguba as well as the Honorable Tammy Duckworth (Assistant Secretary at the VA [Veterans Affairs], a decorated Army veteran from our war in Iraq — where she lost both legs and the partial use of an arm — and still a Major in the Illinois National Guard). I also had the genuine pleasure of meeting Dr. Valentin Ildefonso, US Army Philippine Scout in WWII, and a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the US Air Force, where he served as a medical doctor. Dr. Ildefonso also volunteered later as a doctor during the Vietnam war. (By the way, Dr. Ildefonso was featured in an online news article today for Veterans Day.) Dr. Valentin Ildefonso and Vince Gotera As you may already know from other posts in this blog, my father Martin Gotera and my grandfather Felix Gotera also served in the Philippine Scouts in WWII, where they both were in the Bataan Death March. So it was particularly touching and moving for me to meet these three Army vets, whose courage and service are so allied to the esprit de corps that was the spine of the Gotera family's contributions to the US Army, not just my father and grandfather, but also my brother Pepito's US Army service and mine during the Vietnam war. As part of my poetry reading at the symposium, I read the following poem, which describes my father's relationship with my grandfather, my Lolo whom all of us grandchildren and great-grandchildren called simply Tatay, the Filipino word for "father," because he was so much the patriarch for us all. He was a gentle, soft-spoken old man when I knew him, so unlike the chilling stories Papa told me of Tatay's brutal discipline towards him as a child. The poem, one of three I read at the Library of Congress, describes two sides of that relationship: first, how Tatay whipped my father cruelly and routinely, and second, how Papa found Tatay in the Japanese concentration camp and cared for him as he would have his own child. Tatay My grandfather in a faded photograph is           a centurion blowing a Christmas party horn,                     on his head my foil Roman legionnaire helmet. I remember him smiling like a boddhisatva           as he pulled on scuffed brogans to bail out                     my uncle in the drunk tank — Tito Augusto had been brawling again. But in 1933,           Tatay seemed another man. My father                     at twelve was circumcised with a couple of buddies. The ring of boys.           The penknife. Blood dwindling.                     When Tatay heard, he bent my father over the Army trunk again. Set up           the pitcher and glass. He made his                     two-inch-wide leather belt lick the boy's naked back. Resting, he sipped water, then           got up, belt in hand. My father glanced over                     at the pitcher to see how much was left. There were other stories. How after           the Bataan death march, they met, father                     and son, in the concentration camp near Capas. Tatay shivered at noon, muttering of           bodies mantled with wings, ashimmer.                     My father could see two compounds away, they were burning wood — bark the Igorots           use to cure malaria. My father crept                     under the wire. A butterfly's lazy tango in the glare. That itch           between his shoulderblades. A bead                     of sweat. The imperial guard's boots a yard to the left. The Philippine Army           regulars who were burning the wood smirked                     when they caught him, gathering branches in his arms. With fists and bare feet           pounding his head and back, did he recall                     those rituals of trunk and pitcher? Cradling a bundle of sticks, my father           crawled back. I can see the bark dancing                     now in water, next to the cot where Tatay moans in his sleep. I hear my father           singing softly. I can almost make it out, but                     I can't quite place the tune, a Tagalog lullaby. — Vince Gotera, first appeared in The Madison Review (1989). In the poem, I highlight an ironic and iconic difference between Filipinos: the Philippine Army soldiers beat my father because he was a Philippine Scout, that is, a member of the US Army. In this context, because the US Army can no longer protect my father, they see him as too good for his britches because he is a Filipino in the US Army — uppity, someone whom they would see as having previously lorded over them. The irony is that Papa is beaten in order to save the life of the man who used to beat him. The other two poems I read at the symposium have been featured in the blog already: "Honor, 1946" and "Refusal to Write an Elegy." In the first, we see another side of my father being caught between different racial forces: instead of being attacked by Filipinos, he is attacked by white Americans. In the second, we see the war demons he faces, not from external attack but rather from within. Besides my own small part in the symposium, I was truly moved at the scope and span of the subjects covered, the articulate speakers who gave presentations not only about Filipino Americans in the war but also about the original Flying Tigers, Chinese American fighter pilots who volunteered to fly for the Chinese Air Force against the Japanese even before 1941; the Japanese American soldiers of the most highly decorated American military unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team; the Asian American women who served in various military capacities during the war; and so on. I learned quite a lot, and the symposium was indeed a joyous occasion celebrating the tremendous contributions Asian Pacific Americans made to the American war effort. As General Taguba said in his keynote address, "The Asian Pacific American families who join us today have marked a lasting legacy in our history not to be forgotten. . . . Our unsung heroes have many untold stories yet to be shared. It is their time. It will always be their time." Amen to that, kapatid, kababayan. Today is Veterans Day. Today is also my father's birthday. If he were living today, Papa would be 88 years young. In the '60s, he was a pioneer in the fight to restore the veterans' rights of the Filipino WWII veterans. In San Francisco, he founded an organization, the Filipino American Veterans and Dependents Association, which worked on this problem, setting out what was probably the first class action suit in the struggle. About the recent legislation of one-time payments ($15,000 to Filipino American veterans in the US, $9,000 to Filipino veterans in the Philippines), I'm certain my father would say, if he were here, "Although this payment is, in many eyes, too little too late, it is a significant gesture nonetheless; we in the Filipino American community, however, should still push for the full restoration of these veterans' benefits." You rock, Papa. Happy birthday! Veterans Day will always be your signature holiday. P.S. Many thanks to Reme Grefalda, librarian extraordinaire at the Library of Congress's Asian Division, for inviting me to be a participant in this historic symposium. Maraming salamat, thanks so much, for your hospitality, Reme. I hope I can return the favor sometime if you ever visit Iowa. Now, just a couple more pictures (click on any of the pictures above or below to see larger versions). The Library of Congress is made up of incredibly beautiful buildings. If you are ever in Washington, DC, you should definitely check out the Library. Many visitors go to the Capitol, the Smithsonian, the various memorials. Go also to the Library; it is the living monument to our country's intellectual aspirations and achievements. Kluge Room, where the symposium was held Hallway in the Jefferson Building Lobby of the Jefferson Building Friends, please write a comment below. I'd really love to hear your responses. If you have visited the Library of Congress, tell us all about it. Thanks for visiting the blog! Come back often.

My Poetry Reading at the Library of Congress, Monday, 10/26/09

Hi, everyone. Many MANY apologies for having neglected my blog for so long. It's like I fell off a bicycle, walked it home, and then for some reason couldn't ride it again. The more time passed, the harder it became to pick up again. I promise to get back on the blog bycicle here after I get back from Washington, DC, in three days or so. I am typing this blog post in a hotel business center before I take the train into the city and do the tourist thing. Nothing like a new location to liven up the blog-making. Which I am finding that I'm having to relearn as I go here. I'm in DC because I'm giving a poetry reading tomorrow, Monday, 10/26, as part of the conference "Unsung Heroes: Asian Pacific American Heroism during World War II." This is open to the public so come and check it out. The event runs from 9:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., and my reading is, I believe, at 9:00. I will be reading poems regarding WWII from my collections Ghost Wars and Fighting Kite. If you do make the reading, come up and say hi to me. Also, there will be copies of Fighting Kite for sale. I'll sign one for you. See you tomorrow? A quick update: I just talked by phone to Reme Grefalda, the organizer of tomorrow's conference, and found out my reading will be around 10:00. Before my presentation is the keynote address by retired Army general Antonio Taguba. Do come at 9:00 anyway to catch his address ... it will be well worth it. Taguba, you may recall, is the general who investigated the Abu Ghraib atrocities and wrote the official US Army report on the incident, a report in which he was extremely critical. He even testified that he was convinced Rumsfeld had lied to Congress about Abu Ghraib. Later, after his retirement from the military, Taguba publicly accused the Bush administration of war crimes. I am certainly looking forward to his keynote address and to meeting him. His father and my father both fought in the Philippine Scouts (a US Army unit) and both survived the Bataan Death March. Incidentally, it seems just unbelievable to me that I could be just a couple of years younger than a General — a retired one, at that! Somewhere inside, I'm still that young Army soldier who saw all Generals as old men. But it was about 35 years ago when I was that guy. Does that make me an old man now? Hmm. Nahhhh.

Sunflowers and the Four-Legged Tree

In our backyard, a riotous orgy of growth: the wild forest of sunflowers that springs up annually, a thick three-dimensional scrim taking up loads of ground-space, reaching as much as six or seven feet into blue sky. Our yearly summer panorama, re-inscribing myriad stems on last year's palimpsest of sunflowers. Acolytes of Amun-Ra . . . devotees of the day's eye . . . morning's minions, the A.M. . . . amanuenses of am. Sunflowers: girasol, helianto, las flores del sol (SPANISH) . . . mirasol, mga bulaklak ng araw (FILIPINO). Seers of the sun, soothsayers of light, la luz, ilaw, liwanag. Illumination, insight, epiphany, nirvana. A spray of words, dustmotes, canary and mahogany, dilaw at kayumanggi, yellow and dark brown. Isn't that last photo above simply amazing? I think this particular plant was broken by that windstorm described in my last post. Look how devastated and dilapidated the stem is that arises out of the grass. But the top quarter of the plant has raised itself from the ground and the flower is ready to track the sun in the sky. Incredible. Living things abide. Speaking of living things that abide: some news about the four-legged tree featured last time. The tree experts who were consulted have decided that the tree is just too dangerous because half of the canopy is gone. In another windstorm, the rest of the branches could break off and either damage the house or fall on cars in the street. So all the branches of the tree have been lopped off, and the hope is that the tree will survive and start to push out offshoots that could eventually become a full canopy. There is already new hope. Look at this close-up: a couple of offshoots have sprouted. The tree is still living and abides. As do we all. I hope you are well. Abide and be strong.

Small Acts of God — Cedar Falls, Iowa

At about 3:30 a.m. Friday morning, July 10, Cedar Falls was hit by a severe thunderstorm that generated straight-line winds of around 100 mph in some locations. Estimates range from 60 mph to 160 mph; one theory for the high winds is that the storm produced a powerful microburst. The effect on the town was a LOT of tree damage: huge branches littering the streets; large trees broken off at the trunk, even uprooted. A garage was demolished, and there were widespread outages of electric power, ranging from minutes to hours to days. Here are some photos of the aftermath of the storm. The first was taken by my friend David Grant. Note the tree which has fallen across a street and onto a car; in the right foreground, a power pole has fallen — you can see a transformer on the pole as it leans away. The next picture, taken by my friend Tiffany Bullen, shows a large tree uprooted completely out of the ground. For a sense of scale, note the two houses shown in the background. Tiffany's next shot also shows a tree that has been uprooted; note at the right of the picture the grass that was formerly at the base of the upright tree. The ground torn up with the tree still carries the grass as if nothing has happened. At the left, you can glimpse a guy in blue who is chainsawing branches; seeing how small he looks will give you a sense of how large this tree is. (In order to pick out Blue Guy, you may have to click on the picture to see a larger version.) Carole Fishback, my friend who is a professional photographer, took this next shot. Her dramatic composition shows what a tremendous force snapped this huge tree like a slim twig. As Carole told me, the damage is like "random acts of violence — some giant couldn't find the tree he wanted so he grabbed this one and that one and left them all lying every which way." Here is a photo I took on the University of Northern Iowa campus. This tree was inexplicably torn in three directions. The large break sent a sizable branch towards the left; a break higher on the trunk sent a larger branch toward the right; and underneath the branch on the left is another branch that is going in yet another direction, toward the low concrete wall. I'm pretty sure all the branches came from this tree because there was not another tree nearby, but how they ended up pointing in these three directions is beyond me. The concrete wall in the background is about three or four feet tall, so the highest part of the trunk is about seven feet up. Pretty amazing. This next photo shows the top portion of a power pole. When I first saw this, the morning after the storm, it was hanging in the air from power lines, with the bottom of the portion about six feet above this sidewalk. Where the rest of the pole was I don't know. I stuck my head out the car window to take a picture, but Mary Ann said, "Oh no, this is too dangerous!" and took off. So I didn't get what would have been one heck of a photo, but she was probably right. If the thing had taken that moment to plummet to the ground, we would have been in the middle of a mess of flailing power lines. The next three photos show what happened to our city's landmark tree. It has a huge canopy arising out of four joined trunks; the four trunks form an archway that leads toward the front door of a corner house. I wonder how many engaged couples and also brides and grooms have taken a picture under this tree. It's quite a wonderful thing . . . probably made it into "Ripley's Believe It or Not." This close-up diagrams the four tree trunks, in case you couldn't make them out above. And this third shot shows how much of the original canopy was lost in the storm. The last I heard, on the local TV newscast, the jury was still out on whether the experts thought the tree would survive such massive damage. I sure hope it does. Many years of tree husbandry went into this beautiful thing. Well, that's it for now. I'll keep adding photos to the blog if I find other dramatic images. Fortunately, no casualties other than trees. Ironic since Cedar Falls holds the title of "Tree City USA." Thanks again, David, Tiffany, and Carole, for letting me post your pictures here. Stay well, everyone. Oh, and please write a comment below! If you are in Cedar Falls, tell everyone your storm story here. If you are somewhere else, I'd love to hear your reaction. Thanks!

Gypsy Punk on Nat Geo

Hello, everyone. How about we take a little break from poetry today, and instead have some music. Thanks to Pris Campbell and her blog "Songs to a Midnight Sky," I found out recently that the National Geographic website hosts music videos. And quite a charming and eclectic collection of world music it is. Here's a small sample from Nat Geo, featuring the gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello (the inventors of said genre). Gogol Bordello is fronted by wild man Eugene Hütz . . . you may remember Hütz from the 2005 movie Everything Is Illuminated, where he played Alex, an irrepressible Ukrainian guide who spoke a unique and charming brand of distorted English: "Many girls want to be carnal with me . . . because I'm such a premium dancer!" Gogol Bordello, "Start Wearing Purple" Gogol Bordello, "Wonderlust King" Gogol Bordello Sessions, Part One Gogol Bordello Sessions, Part Two I hope you enjoyed Gogol Bordello's videos and their spectacularly frenetic approach to gypsy music. Did you notice that Eugene Hütz was wearing blue suede shoes in the two "Sessions" videos? Shades of Elvis! Presley, that is. For more on Gogol Bordello, visit their website. And do check out the cool video collection on the National Geographic website. Thanks again, Pris!