On Saturday, November 7, 2009, Mary Abo and I met and took a trip to Lacey to visit Mrs. Sato. We were hosted by both her daughter and son. Mrs. Abo had prepared extensively for our visit. She had looked over the topics we hoped to discuss with her. She had found a number of Mr. Sato’s Senryu about working on Oyster Bay and had written out and translated several of her own. We were able to get a much better sense of how the Senryu group on Oyster Bay started, how the monthly publications of Senryu were organized, and how Mrs. Sato became involved in producing those. Mrs. Sato read some of her own work. Harry Sato was especially helpful in identifying leads for the eventual archiving of the project materials.
On the way home, Mary Abo and I stopped to visit with Nancy Motomatsu and Aki Motomatsu. Nancy gave me a copy of The Japanese Inn to read. We all planned to visit with Mrs. Sato again sometime in January.
Meanwhile, I’ve been using the camcorder with more assurance. I’ve done a number of Bay scenes and some shots of entrances to both the Abo and Motomatsu houses. I’ve scanned more photographs and poems.
This work moves at just the right pace. I’m hoping to use my time on the Rogue River in December to do more editing on both the Tule Lake sequences and the Poets of Oyster Bay sequences.
