Yuji Kodama was a poet, writer, and activist who was an inmate at the Japanese National Sanatorium Kuryu Rakusen-en. He was president of the Plaintiff Group demanding government compensation for Japan’s policy of isolating people affected by leprosy.
Kodama wrote:
The question is “how I can establish the proof of my life.” Whether I can be confident of the life that confronts the state. This is the current theme of mine.
Human rights are inviolable.
Being denied and liquidated as a national disgrace,
And being pushed to ageing; kept alive but worthless
How can I permit this,
I am determined to fight against and gain from this nation,
How I have lived through,
Dignity of a human being and a proof of my life.