From Mira, by Stefan Baciu (Editura Mele, 1979), pp. v-vii (my translation):
Here is a book that I never in my whole life would have thought to write, or if I had ever thought to write it, I would have imagined something completely different from that which was imposed by the cruel circumstances I lived through [...]
Barely more than a month after I started blogging, I translated a poem entitled Patria by the Romanian exile, Stefan Baciu, whom I knew from my graduate school days at the University of Hawai‘i. Baciu administered one of my two foreign language reading exams required for my Ph.D. program. My major language (rather useful for [...]
From Praful de pe Tobă: Memorii 1918-1946, by Stefan Baciu (Editura Mele, 1980), pp. 3-4 (my translation):
From the Bank of Flowers to the Sandwich Archipelago
I write this autobiographical sketch in my study in Honolulu, in a spot on the globe where I would never have been able to imagine that I would live thirty years [...]
Most people who have lived in Hawai‘i for a while know that Diamond Head crater got its English name from the sparkle of worthless crystals in its rocky exterior, and not from real diamonds. And many know that it got its Hawaiian name, Lē‘ahi, from the resemblance of the crater’s ridgeline to the dorsal fin [...]
Japan-based blogger Ampontan backs into a retrospective of former yokozuna Akebono’s spectacular career in sumo and his troubled career afterwards. The story starts with a wrestling match at Yasukuni Shrine and ends up being a requiem for a yokozuna. Here are a few paragraphs to whet your appetite.
There is a long tradition of professional wrestlers [...]
From Life behind Barbed Wire [鉄柵生活 Tessaku Seikatsu]: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawai‘i Issei, by Yasutaro Soga [1873–1957] (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2008), p. 102:
Internees called the world beyond the barbed wire shaba. Although I did not like this word and did not use it, nearly everyone else did because it was [...]
From Life behind Barbed Wire [鉄柵生活 Tessaku Seikatsu]: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawai‘i Issei, by Yasutaro Soga [1873–1957] (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2008), pp. 81-83:
Internees from the Mainland were more rebellious than those from Hawaii. From the point of view of Americans, this kind of behavior was seen as extremely disloyal but, [...]
From Life behind Barbed Wire [鉄柵生活 Tessaku Seikatsu]: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawai‘i Issei, by Yasutaro Soga [1873–1957] (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2008), pp. 61-62
We all welcomed newcomers and anything they could tell us of the outside world, but we were also cautious. Many new arrivals held grudges, blaming their arrests on [...]
From Life behind Barbed Wire [鉄柵生活 Tessaku Seikatsu]: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawai‘i Issei, by Yasutaro Soga [1873–1957] (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2008), pp. 49-50:
About seventy to eighty Germans and Italians were interned in one corner of Sand Island. Their living quarters were next to the Japanese mess hall, and beyond that [...]
From Life behind Barbed Wire [鉄柵生活 Tessaku Seikatsu]: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawai‘i Issei, by Yasutaro Soga [1873–1957] (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2008), pp. 34-35:
On December 24, our first Christmas Eve since our arrest, Mr. Masaji Marumoto arrived at the camp accompanied by an FBI agent. This was the first time someone [...]
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