Tuesday, March 1, 2016
"Farewell To Manzanar" Internment Web Link Background Information
Regarding the Densho Internment Link Resource, what are some ideas or
trends that profoundly struck you that are addressed regarding this
period in American History? Please use any quotes or specific
references to materials that validate your argument. Due by 2:30p.m. on Wed., March 2nd, 2016.
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The trend of anyone who was Japanese or even German and Italian, that no matter what they did, they were going to be watched and kept on a short leash. People were accused of helping the Japanese purely because they had lanterns and flashlights. At this time, the US was in a state of panic as they needed to make sure that they were safe from any attack from within. I do agree somewhat with wanting to make sure, but the way in which the US did it was unethical. These lists allowed the government to begin rounding up what were now “enemy aliens” and destroyed the lives of many Japanese-Americans.
One thing that really stuck out to me after reading this text, was the racism that exsisted in the time period. Japanese-Americans, even if they were born in the states, were taken from their homes and sent to internment camps. "Even though many of us were American-born, it was dangerous having that many Orientals that close to the Long Beach Naval Station..." (Wakatsuki Houston). Even the elderly, like her grandmother who was nearly blind, was forced to evacuate from the area.
Regarding the Densho Interment Link Resource, a few ideas that profoundly struck me that are addressed regarding this period in American history are how divided the nation was back then. What I mean by this is how in the book when the family moved to Santa Monica, how they were the only Oriental family there. This struck me because now you can find Oriental families all around the USA and there are not only like one family in each neighborhood. There are large numbers of them everywhere. This just shows how much we have changed since the bombing of PEarl Harbor where we had a deep hatred towards Japan, and now how we look at Oriental people in America just like anyone else.
After reading the stories about Japanese Americans during World War 2 on the Densho website, I was surprised to learn how poorly treated they were compared to the rest of American society. The Densho website explained that Japanese Americans were forced into America's version of a concentration camp. These people were disregarded as citizens as a whole, only because of the history of their ancestors. This was clearly the wrong thing to do, because America later learned that none of the people they arrested had any intentions of helping Japan.
Many of the images on the website struck me. In the images, you are able to witness the sadness and confusion of the incarcerated individuals. One fact that really stuck with me was when the website stated that individuals could lose things such as their birthrights. I also was astonished that if you were drafted while in internment and disagreed to, they could be imprisoned. Though perhaps the most astonishing thing was that families could be split up and/or relocated throughout the nation.
After looking through the Densho Interment Link Resource I was stuck but the idea that Americans persecuted Japanese citizens/immigrants simply for the reason that they didn't look like us. The looked like the enemy so they were held captive just in case they would side with Japan in the case of war. To some that may seem like the right idea but I was appalled that citizens and immigrants were arrested even though there was no proof of their crime. On the "Looking Like the Enemy" page in the Densho Resource the authors write, "...the Japanese American community as a whole posed little threat to the US should war with Japan take place." It is amazing that even though Japanese immigrants created a very small threat to America police still had the right and orders to take these people out of their homes. I can't imagine how hard it would be the leave everything I know behind just because I don't look like the majority of the population. It just doesn’t seem fair that they could be arrested because they may or may not be guilty. They way someone looks doesn’t define the actions they will take.
One of the main ideas that struck me after looking at some videos in the Densho Internment Website was that after the internment of the Japanese Americans, many came home not being able to do things they could once do because people lived in fear of them. One example of this was a girl named "Sally" Kitano who could not rejoin the girl scouts because of her race. The people had said that it was because all the other girls had advanced and she would be behind, but she later found out anyone can join at anytime. This made me shocked at this time in history where people were so mean to people of other ethnicity and people who were stereotyped because of the war.
Some trends that I noticed from this age are the racist acts against the Japanese-Americans. This was evident not only in the schools with the children, but with their living situations. In history class I remember Roosevelt as president and WW2 on its way. It seems like the main character is in the middle of this and we get a taste of it. Near the end of the chapter we see the mother who is fighting her own battle. She is having to move out withing 48 hours and we see the effects of that on her. In 1913, California passed the first alien land law, which prohibited “aliens ineligible for citizenship” from purchasing agricultural land.This one specific idea that struck me.
In the story "Farewell TO Manzana", what stuck to me was how much hate was against the Japanese in the U.S. But I can see where the Americans can get it from, defiantly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. What also stuck to me was when the Mother in the story threw and broke all of her valuables because the man refused to pay her the full price of a couple of hundred dollars. So I can sense on why she would be upset. During this time period, there was a lot of hate from all races. It was cruel, but as years gone by it had decreased.
The main things that really struck me while I was reading these articles were that the Japanese people were only given a couple of days to leave their homes and that the Military could take any of and all of the Japanese to the concentration camps, even though they were almost completely innocent. In the reading, it said, "President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066—which gave the army power to exclude whomever it saw fit under the guise of “military necessity”—on February 19, 1942" (Looking Like the Enemy Paragraph 2). This really surprised me because the President said that the Military could remove anyone they wanted to because it was a "military necessity".
After reading the Densho Internment Link, the American trend to discriminate against a whole race due to bias struck me as a reoccurring norm of America. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bomber Pearl Harbor, causing drastic actions to occur. The fear-based accusations of Washington D.C. caused President Eisenhower to sign Executive Order 9066, making all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to be put in internment camps. This over exaggeration due to one incident has occurred time and time again in American history. The events on September 11th, 2001 caused an American bias towards Muslims, and prejudice and bias towards African-Americans caused multiple shootings of unarmed blacks, most noticeably Ferguson, Missouri. This trend is very real and a issue us as Americans have to get over.
Something that really stuck to me from the Densho website and the book, is how abrutly the government made arrests after the Pearl Harbor bombing. The Japanese Americans had no chance to adjust or prepare for the internment camps. This shows how scared the government was of the Japanese Americans, and how eager they were to send them to internment camps.
On the website Densho, racism was a big piece in that time. Just like in the story, Farewell to Manzanar, people with different color skin, had to deal with a lot of racism. The racism part in the story really stood out to me. Like in the story when the family received the news about the dad, he was supposedly arrested for giving oil to the Japanese. We don’t know if that was true but according to the story it seems that just because of his race officers just assumed that he was giving oil to the Japanese so they arrested him for it.
Some of the ideas that stuck with me from the Densho website were incarcerating 120,000 Japanese Americans. I thought this idea was crazy that they did this to 120,000 Japanese Americans. "The roots of Japanese immigrant communities in both the continental United States and in Hawai’i began with the start of mass migration of laborers from Japan to the Kingdom of Hawai’i in 1885." This quote was a idea that really stuck with me how many Japanese came to america to work."For nearly a decade prior to the outbreak of war, various federal agencies had been conducting surveillance in Japanese American communities in anticipation of a possible war with Japan." This quote has another different but good idea that was fascinating because they thought that Japanese Americans were spies for Japan. That must have been hard for all the Japanese Americans. Overall this website had lots of good ideas.
I was really surprised that how defensive the Japanese-Americans were after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It quotes the they were always thinking about what to do next. This can be explain in the book Farewell to Manzanar,"Papa had been the patriarch. He always decided everything in the family. With him gone, my brothers, like councilors in the absence of a chief, worried about what should be done. the ironic thing is, there wasn't much left to decide." -Jeanne Wakatsuki 15 & 16. This quote showed how stressed and worried the Japanese were. This passage also talks about how there was talk about internment camps, and other horific ideas, but there was nothing they could do to prevent anything. It can be further investigated at Densho.org, "long with some prisoners of German and Italian descent—they were moved to internment camps run by the army or Immigration and Naturalization Service".
Regarding this period in American History, some ideas that profoundly struck me were that the Americans saw the Japanese as the enemy and would treat them differently. At this time on history, the U.S feared of any attack and kept well aware. After the bombing on Pearl Harbor, the U.S could not really trust the Japanese anymore and incarcerated them. And because of the history of the Japanese ancestor’s, these Japanese Americans were racially discriminated.A quote from the website states,"Soon after their arrival, Japanese Americans became the targets of severe and racially exclusive forms of discrimination, much of it originating in California." These Japanese Americans were not at all treated equally as U.S. citizens.
Some ideas on the Densho website that profoundly struck me during the time of WWII were how people treated each other because they were "different" Even the Japanese were racist toward each other. The Americans treated the Japanese has "the enemy's insight" not has an American "asset". Some of the people may have looked like the enemy but they were Americans. We had given them citizenship and upon that we gave them the rights of an American. Another, thing that really upset me was the sadness you see in the children’s eyes. They do not understand what is happening. All they know is their family is being torn apart and they are no longer home. The fact we treated our own people this way worries me for what happens next time the wrong ethnicity poses a threat.
The one thing that really struck me after reading from the Densho website was how poorly people treated Japanese Americans. Just because we were in a war with Japan, we put Japanese Americans into concentration camps. The people may have resembled that of the enemy, but they were still American citizens. The idea of treating other Americans this way just because of race makes me feel bad for the Japanese in this time and angry with the goverment.
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