History

There’s an empty space in my history

Where the textbooks seem to turn away

From a vacant place where the truth should be

From eastern countries, immigrants would flee

To escape their governments’ false ways

And find hope in a land that was said to be free

(There’s an empty space in my history)

Here, farmers fought an unfair hierarchy

And laborers struggled for better pay

And should-be citizens stood before juries

Whose hum of bias drowned out every plea

(In the vacant place where the truth should be)

Still, fairness would win out, and finally

Our laws could let those slighted have their say

Then bombs fell from the air and suddenly

They shattered feelings of security

And fell upon countless families’ dreams

To express their pride in being Japanese

(There’s an empty space in my history)

But our students often fail to see

Their classrooms brush past these events each day

Claiming that, simply

They’re just too busy

(To fill the place where the truth should be)

And I wonder, how could we

Try to fit so many

Into one single story?

There’s an empty space in my history

It’s a family album cast away

It’s a people who won’t ever be

Invisible or lost to me

Let words cover this place where the truth will be.

- Ellen Labitzke