27 Facts About Albert Saijo

Albert Fairchild Saijo was a Japanese-American poet associated with the Beat Generation.

Albert Saijo was the author of The Backpacker, a short book on backpacking, and coauthor of Trip Trap, a collection of haiku written with Jack Kerouac and Lew Welch.

Albert Saijo died in 2011 in Hawaii, where he had lived since the 1990s.

Albert Saijo was born in Los Angeles, California on February 4,1926, to Satoru and Asano Miyata Albert Saijo.

Albert Saijo's parents were Issei, first-generation immigrants to the United States.

Albert Saijo's father, Satoru, was born in 1878 in Kumamoto Prefecture, and immigrated to the US in 1900.

Albert Saijo was employed in Cleveland, Ohio by Albert Fairchild Holden, after whom he later named his second son, Albert Fairchild.

Albert Saijo's mother, Asano, was born in 1893 and arrived in the US as a picture bride in 1921.

Albert Saijo had an older brother, Gompers, born 1922, and a younger sister, Hisayo, born 1928.

In 1942, when Albert Saijo was 15 years old, he and his family were removed from their California home and imprisoned at Pomona Assembly Center, then transferred to Heart Mountain Relocation Center, as part of the US government's program of Japanese American internment.

In 1942, Albert Saijo began to write for his high school newspaper, the Heart Mountain Echoes.

The historian Michael Masatsugu has argued that while Albert Saijo did challenge the racial essentialist construction of Japanese Americans that was used to justify their internment, his arguments regarding the irrelevance of race and his call for Japanese Americans to assimilate were consistent with the approach of the War Relocation Authority.

Masatsugu observes that this was not a coincidence: Albert Saijo and other writers were supervised by WRA officials, and Masatsugu argues that this supervision was a form of surveillance and censorship.

Albert Saijo was more explicit in a March 1943 editorial, in which he associated internment with imprisonment and suggested that it was driven by discrimination.

Albert Saijo later remembered internment as an "adventure", but as causing the break-up of his immediate family as he and his siblings began to spend more time with their peers.

Albert Saijo was part of an early-leave program that commenced before the camps were closed; through a War Relocation Authority program he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he hoped to attend the University of Michigan but instead took a job in a cafeteria.

Albert Saijo was eventually drafted, and served in the 100th Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Albert Saijo trained in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and served in Italy during the post-war occupation.

Bill, Albert Saijo attended the University of Southern California and earned a bachelor's degree in International Relations with a minor in Chinese.

Albert Saijo entered USC's graduate program and began work on a thesis on the 1954 partition of Vietnam.

Albert Saijo worked at the YMCA in San Francisco's Chinatown, and attended courses delivered there by David Hunter of the Human Potential Movement, where he met Lew Welch; and through Welch he met Allen Ginsberg, Joanne Kyger, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and others.

Albert Saijo eventually moved in with Welch, Whalen, and others, and in 1959 led meditation at Snyder's zendo in Marin, California.

Albert Saijo later was a minor character in Kerouac's Big Sur, in which he takes the name "George Baso" and in Kerouac's depiction of the 1959 drive is described as "the little Japanese Zen master hepcat sitting crosslegged in the back of Dave's [Lew's] jeepster".

Albert Saijo's The Backpacker is a short book offering guidance on how backpackers can enter a spiritual psychedelic experience.

Albert Saijo moved from Northern California to Volcano, Hawaii in the early 1990s.

Albert Saijo was survived by his wife Laura, his sister Hisayo, and four stepchildren.

The exhibition included work by 29 artists responding to poems by Albert Saijo that were published posthumously in the Bamboo Ridge Press house magazine.