Concentration Constellation By Lawson Fusao Summary

The poem “Concentration Constellation” is written by Lawson Fusao, a Japanese American poet. During WWII, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the American government declared war with Japan. The concentration camps were then built to imprison Japanese Americans since the majority of the society thought all Japanese Americans were potentially spies and were not trustworthy. According to Lee Those Japanese American were forced to leave everything behind and lost their freedom to live outside of the camps (212-228). The title ““Concentration Constellation” as the implication that there were so many camps in the United States that it resembled a constellation on the sky. However, the stars are not bright, and the author describes them as “barbs of dark”. This is because the camps are places where a lot of tragedies happened and are therefore sad, dark places for those Japanese Americans. He then …show more content…
The author expresses indignation for the unfair experience Japanese Americans had during that time, feeling sad about it, but feels helpless as no one can go back to the past to help them. The only thing we can do is to regard it as a lesson and don’t make the same mistake again. The sadness and helpless can also be reflected in the second verse, in which the author repeated “it’s all right there” for two time. Toward the end of the poem, the scar and the fence also carry the similar emption since scar reminds us the pain and the fence reminds us the deprivation of freedom. The rhythm of the poem is quite slow. We tend to read the poem rather slowly, yet it is still powerful since the words carry a strong emotion. In the second (it’s all right there, it’s all right there), the sixth (it’s a big county, it’s a big history) and the last verses (it sets there, it lies there), the author uses repetition of “it’s” to intensify the rhythm and make those parts feel more powerful to readers.
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