David Rovics
– Artist’s Website –
I heard George Takei (actor, activist) speak at the Silver Anniversary of the Japanese-American Memorial Plaza in Portland, Oregon. the plaza is named after one of the many Japanese-Americans who was interned in concentration camps during World War II, as George Takei and his family were, when he was a child. The fact that the kids at the school in the camp had to recite the Pledge of Allegiance just like kids at other schools throughout the US was specifically what inspired me to verse. (It’s all about coming up with a good hook line, and George amply supplied those in his short talk.)
Lyrics:
Liberty and Justice For All
Do you often remember the day the soldiers came
When you became a number, not a child with a name
How oft do you recall that specific day
When they sold your family home and took you all away
Banished to the desert to live in hot tar shacks
Having no idea if you’d be ever coming back
How oft do you recall walking to the school
Being taught about the glories of democratic rule
As you sat beneath the watchtower, surrounded by a wall
With liberty and justice for all
Do you often remember the young men allowed to leave
To go fight and die in Europe, their families left to grieve
In shacks there in the desert, locked behind a gate
As you went to class each morning in these United States
Do you often remember reciting those strange words
As you held your hand on heart did it all seem so absurd
One nation indivisible, one nation under God
Condemned to live behind the wire by a presidential nod
Do you often remember the day your family was set free
And you went back to the coast beside the Pacific sea
Without a home to go to, no soil left to till
When you’d recite the pledge each morning was it a very bitter pill