Myth of Arrival

Rimi Natsukawa is an marvelous, marvelous folk singer from Okinawan. Here she is performing the American spiritual “Amazing Grace” in her native Okinawan.

I wrote this sonnet two years ago for my padre on Father’s Day. And now Gepetto’s Despair just appeared in this edition of The New Formalist. Oh happy days!

hot air slicing through
her words, name, body; splattered
on my startled face.
And so ends the story of the Himeyuri.
I first became interested in making a movie version of the story of the Himeyuri when I stumbled, completely by accident, on a rare film clip that burnt itself into my brain. […]

I still remember some Okinawan phrases I learned at that time. For some reason, all of them have to do with hospitality.
– Ikuo Ogiso, a Japanese soldier. (Feifer, 58)
In Okinawa, we say Nichi do takara: Life is a treasure. Whatever the reasons to fight and kill, however profound the […]

At the heart of the story of the Himeyuri, what turned this from simply being one more example of courage during terrible times into horror (at least for me), was an order given right before Okinawa fell to the Americans; the order commanding the Nurse Corps to […]