Write in Your Journal Like Stanley Hayami: 5 Approaches to Try

Behind barbed wire on American soil, LA native Stanley Hayami wrote for himself alone, filling journal pages never meant for anyone’s eyes. We can honor him by learning from his journal entries and his approach to writing.

Stanley kept a diary before his life was upended by forced internment in a concentration camp with his family and other Japanese Americans from 1942 to 1944. His practice continued during his Heart Mountain internment camp days. Those journals reveal resilience, frustration, and hope.

His writing voice is both intimate and clear-eyed. He really noticed the world around him—people, places, ordinary moments—modestly tucking his own views into the gaps between the details.

You can bring Stanley’s approach into your own practice:

1. Document life inside and around you.

2. Embody humility.

3. Show respect.

4. Draw what words cannot say.

5. Make lists.

1. Document life inside and around you

Vast and varied occurrences mark a day—big, mundane, pleasant, and unpleasant things. In just a sentence or two on a page, encapsulate the heart of an event.

Hayami recorded it all, from a blackout in the concentration camp where he was imprisoned to an irritating Algebra teacher—

“Man did my Algebra teacher give us some tough problems.”