Japanesse Interment Camps

Word Count 538

The vignettes that I found most compelling were the barbed wire, the paper plane, and a Japanese family burning their culture items. The barbed wire went all around the memorial from the front to back. The paper plane was in the back of the memorial right above the barbed wire. The Japanese people burning their “ethnic” items were on the front of the memorial. This was compelling to me because it represented people of Japanese ancestry in the United States. The three vignettes paralleled many “minority” people’s experience of not being the “majority.”

The barbed wire was on the front, even before the Japanese people were put in the camps, and even after. This meant to me, that even though they were free there was still that resentfulness towards them. It’s significant because that is how a lot of “minorities” feel. The Japanese people might be out of the concentration camps, but many will still feel confined to one. Because of the racism towards them before the war, and the more they encountered after.

The paper plane is a symbol of childhood, and how Japanese children still managed to find fun during the interment. This also represents how some things cannot be broken. The Japanese people were enslaved for a period of time but still kept their traditions alive, and many still kept their faith in the United States.

The Japanese family burning their traditional items was the most compelling for me. Because these items are much more than material objects, they represented who they were. The Japanese people had to hide something about them because it was too “ethnic.” They had to cover up who they were in hopes that they would fit in to the majority culture.

I found these three particular vignettes compelling because it displayed a little bit of the Japanese experience at the time. I think that all of the things that have happened to the Japanese people have happened to other races at some point. Not the same exact thing as imprisonment, but a form of servitude to others.

It is a topic that people rarely discuss in history class. The way the Japanese people were treated before and after mirrors many immigrants. I do believe that something like this could and will happen again. The media and government can influence a great amount of people. They will able to ride on the fears of those non Japanese people who held resentment towards people of Japanese ancestry.

It really depends on how much people are willing to believe the media, in particular. A recent wave of racial profile like this can be seen towards people of Middle Eastern, and Indian descent after September 11^th. It did not go as far as the Japanese interment camps, but the situations are somewhat similar.

A major kamikaze bombing on Pearl Harbor, by a few extremists, caused dislike for an entire race. The internment camps could happen again because having a fear for something or someone is very strong. Fear does not have to be justified it just is. Many non Japanese people simply hatred Japanese people just because. This allowed the media and government to play on that hatred, and condition it to a fear.