Asian American Little Magazines 1968-1974: By Amardeep Singh

Gidra 1.3

The third issue of Gidra contains the most detailed analysis of the Noguchi trial thus far in the magazine. It also has an account of an anti-war protest in "Occoupied Berkeley" on May 18, 1969, as well as ongoing developments in the growth of Asian American activism at UCLA. 

Table of Contents: Of the poems, the most notable might be "Fairfax and Yamamoto," a critique of the Japanese internment camps from the point of view of a Jewish observer. An excerpt: 

1941
We waltzed through
battered Fairfax High
-an old school crushed by loser anti-Jew
When Kuni Yamamoto
   went to Manzanar-

The searchlights and 
   the guns reached
   out for phantom planes
as corridors of 
stoplights mapped
the 'blacked-out' city-
   We sat upon bleachers
   listening willingly
   to the dramatic solemn
   words resolute

[...]
Kuni, bright young
patriot of gentle morals
   How fast a bigot's 
   handshake turns to clamps
   And barbed wire
   replaces school yard fence
Among your peers so unaware and 
still
was not one bearded boy
or long tressed girl
   to scorn the folly 

The entire issue can be accessed at Densho repository here:

http://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-297-3/

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