President Obama celebrates George Masa and Horace Kephart

President Obama celebrates George Masa in White House address.

Take a look at the youtube version here.

New George Masa letters found

“Alice: It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”

-Alice In Wonderland




The 'mystery' of George Masa just keeps getting more mysterious. Over the past five years or so I've been aware of the possible existence of some letters written in Japanese written by or to George Masa. To make a long story short, some of them were finally found (special thanks to Edie Robinson) and have now been translated by my trusted friend Fusako Krummel. I only wish translation would have made the letters easier to understand. She and I have enjoyed theorizing about the meaning of the letters, none of which are in their complete form. 

The letters speak to Masa's very close association with a number of Japanese friends whom he stayed in frequent communication with, at least for his first few years of being in the U.S.. These letters suggests answers to some of the previously unknown information about Masa, but, in classic Masa fashion, nothing about these letter clear up the mysteries definitively, in fact, they pose more questions than they answer with allusions to Masa's own past. I'm telling you... its complicated.

I'll leave you with this little sample of poetry, probably written by Masa in one of the letters:

Bathing in the sun and shown by moonlight,
Blown by the Autumn wind, showered by the summer rain,
And the winter mist, the poet sings the wonder of nature,
The history of a billion years, dreaming another spring to come.
Life is short, already half gone.