[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 138 (Tuesday, September 18, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1909]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    IN HONOR OF VIOLET DE CRISTOFORO

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. SAM FARR

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 18, 2007

  Mr. FARR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize one of my 
district's most outstanding citizens, Violet de Cristoforo. Today, the 
National Endowment for the Arts will honor Mrs. de Cristoforo with a 
National Heritage Fellowship Award, our country's highest honor in folk 
and traditional arts.
  Violet de Cristoforo was born Kazue Yamane in Ninole, Hawaii. At the 
age of 8 she was sent to Hiroshima, Japan for her primary education. 
Then at the age of 13 she returned to the United States to attend high 
school in Fresno, California. Upon her graduation Mrs. de Cristoforo 
married Shigaru Matsuda. It was also around this time that Mrs. de 
Cristoforo joined the Valley Ginsha Haiku Kai, a local haiku kais, or 
poetry club, and began focusing on the newer kaiko style that loosened 
haiku traditional 5-7-5 structure.
  With the onset of WWII, Mrs. de Cristoforo, her husband and three 
children were moved to forced detention facility in Jerome, Arkansas. 
After her husband refused to complete a questionnaire, the family was 
split up; Mrs. de Cristoforo and her children were sent to Tule Lake, 
California, while her husband was sent to a detention facility in Santa 
Fe, New Mexico. While under forced internment, she wrote hundreds of 
haikus reflecting on her environment and everyday life in the camps. 
Sadly, only fifteen of the hundreds of haikus survived upon her release 
in 1946.
  It is important that we recognize Mrs. de Cristoforo not only for her 
own haikus but for the hard work and dedication she contributed to the 
preservation, translation and publication of other haikus of the 
Japanese culture and life in the forced internment camps. Mrs. 
Cristoforo's own book, ``Poetic Reflections of the Tule Lake Internment 
Camp, 1944'' was published over 40 years after it was originally 
written. Years later Mrs. de Cristoforo compiled the haikus of many 
former internment camp poets and published, ``May Sky: There's Always 
Tomorrow: A History and Anthology of Haiku''. These poems are not just 
their history; they are part of our American history, because these 
people were also Americans.
  It is sad that so few of these works survived that time, for not only 
were many lost in the camps but, prior to their forced detention when 
many of them were destroyed. At the time Mrs. de Cristoforo and her 
husband ran a small bookstore in Fresno. This material is forever lost 
which makes her work that much more important.
  Madam Speaker, Violet Kazue de Cristoforo is truly deserving of our 
thanks and her recognition by the NEA with the National Heritage 
Fellowship Award is but a small token of appreciation for a lifetime of 
dedication and sacrifice.

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