HANDSHAKEby Kurihara Sadako
 Gordon W. Prange Collection, University of Maryland Libraries Site Ed. note: This poem was written in February 1946, but Occupation censors in Fukuoka stopped Kurihara from including it in her postwar anthology, Black Eggs. Kurihara's note in the unexpurgated version, published many years later in 1983, says simply: "This poem was deleted in its entirety by prepublication censorship." Intent until yesterday on playing war, the little militarists throw away their toy weapons and call out: "Hello, Mr. American Soldier!" Their small breasts Swell with vague curiosity About this unknown race: "Hello, Mr. American Soldier!" Can it have been you who until yesterday Our fathers were fighting? "Hello, Mr. American Soldier!" You open your large mouth, smile cheerfully, not a bit like the devils the grown-ups taught us about: Mr. American Soldier! We'd like to shake your large hand. ......................... ReferenceKurihara Sadako. Black Eggs: Poems. Trans. Richard H. Minear. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies, 1994, 74.
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