Let me tell you the story in
the form of a dream,
I don't know why I have
to tell it but I know what it means,
Close your eyes, just
picture the scene,
As I paint it for you, it
was World War II,
When this man named Kenji
woke up,
Ken was not a
soldier,
He was just a man with a
family who owned a store in LA,
That day, he crawled out of
bed like he always did,
Bacon and eggs with wife and
kids,
He lived on the second floor
of a little store he ran,
He moved to LA from
Japan,
They called him
'Immigrant,'
In Japanese, he'd say he
was called "Issei,"
That meant 'First
Generation In The United States,'
When everybody was afraid of
the Germans, afraid of the Japs,
But most of all afraid of a
homeland attack,
And that morning when Ken
went out on the doormat,
His world went black
'cause,
Right there; front page
news,
Three weeks before
1942,
"Pearl Harbour's
Been Bombed And The Japs Are Comin',"
Pictures of soldiers
dyin' and runnin',
Ken knew what it would lead
to,
Just like he guessed, the
President said,
"The evil Japanese in
our home country will be locked away,"
They gave Ken, a couple of
days,
To get his whole life packed
in two bags,
Just two bags, couldn't
even pack his clothes,
Some folks didn't even
have a suitcase, to pack anything in,
So two trash bags is all
they gave them,
When the kids asked mom
"Where are we goin'?"
Nobody even knew what to say
to them,
Ken didn't wanna lie, he
said "The US is lookin' for spies,
So we have to live in a
place called Manzanar,
Where a lot of Japanese
people are,"
Stop it don't look at
the gunmen,
You don't wanna get the
soldiers wonderin',
If you gonna run or
not,
'Cause if you run then
you might get shot,
Other than that try not to
think about it,
Try not to worry 'bout
it; bein' so crowded,
Someday we'll get out,
someday, someday