b'forced dispersal and / diaspora. The US government justified incarceration as beneficent evacuation, but Makuuchis poems protest this characterization. 16In addition to incarceration, Makuuchi contested the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and warned of the ongoing dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. In his poem Flaming Swords, he foresaw the consequences of those two bombs: Those two stonesdropped into the pond Keep on ringing roundthe world Nowoverlappinginterfacing The diamond shapes in his print Fractrealization of Oppenheimer (fig. 49) call back to his poems Diamonds in the Sun and Diamonds Are Forever. Dropping atomic bombs on Japan, like incarcerating Japanese and Japanese Americans without trial, fractured lives that some dominant Americans devalued through their racist perspective and actions. Similarly, the ripple effects of these bombs, like the consequences of incarceration, would transmit across time and space, eventually affecting the world. Makuuchi did not live to witness the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, but his poem Split Atoms was prophetic: When the Earth . . . shakes / quakes / its reactors / we should rid / before too late . . .In his poem Dear Anne Frank, My Age Mate, Makuuchi protests and warns against Hellocaustand ARMageddon. Although he identifies with her, he is quick to say Your horrors that happened, could not / never ever even be imag-ined. He goes on, however, to compare the ovens of Europe with the magno/ FIGURE \x05 Fractrealization of Oppenheimer CHECKLIST #39micro ovens of Asiaweapons of mass destruction directed at populations deemed less than equal. Ultimately, the speaker pleads, Let it neverevermore happen again. A politically-minded activist and visual artist, Makuuchi performedback to the volumes title: From Lake Minidoka to Lake Mendota and Back to the his defiant vision with boldly descriptive and evocatively imagistic language. InNorthwest Sea. Makuuchis life began in Seattle. Wartime incarceration forced the tradition of Jeremiah, the Biblical prophet, he represented reality head on,him and his family to Minidoka in Idaho. Educational and other opportunities observed it from various perspectivesoften criticallyand forecast the conse- brought Makuuchi to Lake Mendota in Wisconsin. At the end of his life, Makuuchi quences of present-day choices.found himself back in Seattle, on the shores of the figurative Northwest Sea. His poem Gaman characterizes salmon as creatures that can endure long Makuuchis global vision also can be perceived in his poems about migrationswims and time Chilled under ice and in land-locked / Midwestern lakes. and race. When imagining Japanese and Japanese American migration, he oftenHowever trapped or far from their point of origin, these salmon are still Seeking employed salmon imagery. Salmon are born in fresh water, migrate to and livethe homewaters, / Natal salt / of flowing seas. This hopeful poem allegorizes much of their lives in salt water, and then return to fresh water to spawn. ThinkMakuuchis own journey and that which he wishes for his people.122 123'