Summary and Thoughts
This “American Story” was a very detailed account of the World War Two period during which the Japanese Americans were being discriminated against. Okihiro gave a historical time line and details of the occurrences that led to the internment of the majority of the Japanese population on the West Coast of the United States. In this excerpt he gives a voice to the Japanese people that were mistreated by the government, by allowing survivors of the internment to recall their stories.
From this article the reader really is allowed to feel the alienation that the Japanese population felt from their own country. The government systematically rounded up and broke up families and shipped them to different states to be a part of internment camps. Further than the break up of the Japanese family, the government also helped to break up the Japanese community. The neighbors of people, who suffered from the internment of a member of their family, were not even visited because of fear of bringing attention to themselves.
The most important quote (at least the most important that I felt) from this excerpt spoke on the undemocratic and unjust practices of the American government to the Japanese people. “More than a violation of civil liberties, the government’s actions sought to deny Japanese Americans their dignity and essential humanity.” This was an important quote because it expresses the hypocritical stand that America took in fighting for the rights of others but not their own citizens. This excerpt really taught me about a historical period that I knew little about. I feel like this, “American Story” really helps to capture the treatment of not only the Japanese Americans felt during World War II but also, reflects the trails that other minorities experienced at one time in American history.
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I agree with your comments about this reading. I was appalled by the fact that the internment camp period is absent in many historical textbooks. Many Americans do not even know that the government took part in these actions. By keeping this period almost a secret it showcases the government's embarrassment for their actions. They truly did strip Japanese Americans from their rights.
ReplyDeleteI had the same reaction to this reading. I almost don't believe that this happened in our country only 60 years ago and it is missing from some of our textbooks. As we have seen through this class, minorities have had a hard time in this country, but I think that in order to keep history from repeating itself, we need to embrace it rather than hide it.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you. The systematic quashing of Japanese Americans before and during WWII illustrates the gravest of government misconduct. The way in which the US interned all of the leaders within the community in order to take away the voice of an entire American ethnic group is shameful. The subsequent degradation of these people during their process of being interned really went above and beyond a violation of their civil liberties and entered a zone of cruelty and humiliation.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with your comments. The deliberate misrepresentation of the facts in textbooks is such an injustice to those people who went through this. The same actions can be seen when we look at how lobbying groups and the government shaped what it meant to be a "soldier in the civil war". I believe that this history of misrepresentation should come to an end. We owe it to our youth to educate them about past events so they can learn from them. Hiding them only creates a greater possibility of them being repeated.
ReplyDeleteContinuing on with each of the previous comments, I am also completely surprised this information is absent from our textbooks. In my opinion, this is a form of complete censorship and is very reminiscent to Chinese censorship of the Tienenmen Square Pro-democracy rallies that occurred in the late 1980s. For a bit of context, the Chinese government has completely banned access to any information regarding this pro-democracy movement, restricting any images, words, or texts associated with it over the internet and in textbooks. For the U.S. not to include any of this in textbooks is very unfortunate and very uncharacteristic of the principles upon which our society was built.
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