Japanese internment during World War II was never really talked about in my high school history classes. We always focused on what happened in the war overseas, not on the war going on here in America. Of course, the internment camps were mentioned, but, being a high school student, I didn't know enough to really get fired up about what happened to the Japanese-Americans during this time. After high school, I was given a closer look at what happened in the United States during the war, and what I learned was shaming. I couldn't believe what had been done to Japanese-Americans and I felt ashamed at my country for knowingly discriminating against them. Before beginning the partner project for this class, I looked at my archival resource, which was a group of photos from Japanese internment camps. In most of the pictures, the people are smiling. After seeing photos of their living conditions, I couldn't understand what they were smiling about.
Mitsuye Yamada's poem "Evacuation" from her book Camp Notes and Other Writings is about a photo similar to those I saw on the archival resource. After reading this poem, I understand the smiling faces much more than I did before. In the poem, the narrator said "the Seattle Times/ photographer said/ Smile!/ so obediently I smiled" (p.13, lines7-10). The Japanese culture has a high respect for people who are in a higher position than them (and for people in general). It therefore makes sense that a Japanese-American would smile when asked to, because it shows his/her respect for the other person by doing what has been asked of him/her. Perhaps internees felt that, although they were being disrespected by being put in internment camps, they were to uphold their honor and respect for others. Japanese people are very proud of their culture and who they are, and by disrespecting someone else, they are bringing dishonor upon themselves and upon their family.
Even though the Japanese-Americans were 'obedient', they were considered criminals, even though they had done nothing wrong. They were put into camps which were lined with barbwire fences, and were guarded by military personnel. For innocent people who had done no wrong, they were well protected from doing harm to anyone. I think one poem that shows how criminalized the Japanese-Americans were is "Curfew" (p.16). In the poem, the narrator is reading under a blanket with a flashlight, and when curfew comes, the warden comes by and says "off with your lights" (line 16). The description of how "the barracks boards/ in the hot sun/ had shrunk slyly/ telling/ bars of light" (lines 11-15) shows how prison-like the internment camps were. After being respectful to the White-Americans, the Japanese-Americans were imprisoned for a crime that hadn't been committed. The injustice is nauseating.
Gina: Thank you for bringing up the issue of education. We often think History classes are objective and straightforward, full of "facts" that children (or adults, in the case of college) need to learn. However, history is a STORY, and has political and ideological weight for that reason. We can tell the story in a number of different ways: from the perspective of the powerful or the weak, inclusively or not, etc.
ReplyDeleteI think the word "obediently" (10) is the most interesting one in Yamada's poem "Evacuation." Do we take this word at face value, or do we see the speaker/poet using it ironically here?
Gina, like you, I never learned about the Japanese internments in hight school. In fact, I didn't learn about it until last year while taking an art history class here at Miami and the professor brought in photos of the internment and spoke at length about it. I was shocked. Here we are, the U.S., fighting a war overseas to free the Jews from concentration camps and horrible condiditions and yet, secretly, we are doing the same thing to a different demographic of people. It's no wonder why half of the world hates the U.S. We talk out of both sides. We condemn others for something and yet we engage in the same activity all in the name of "national security." I think things such as this need to be taught in school. American history is definitly skewed to make the U.S. always look like the heroes and yet there is a large portion of our history missing; a dark part that needs to have a little light shown on it. After examining those photos with you there were a lot of smiling faces but as we said in class that was classic propaganda and we do not know under what conditions the Japanese were being forced to smile and ultimately be compliant...did they have a gun to their head? Where they threatened? The Japanese did appear to comply with everything they were instructed to do and this bit of absent history shows the character of not just one person but an entire group of people. They made the best out of a bad situation (something I don't know that I would be able to do) and they were able to come out of it. They of course bring with them the memories but the point is they survived and through creative outlets, poetry, writing, painting, etc. they captured this history from their perspective.
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ReplyDeleteHi Gina, I have different point of view on how you understands the smiling face in the poem “Evacuation”.
ReplyDeleteThe Seattle Times photographer said
Smile!
so obediently I smiled
I feel like the author was forced to smile because she has to obey to the photographer instead of smiling on her own will. It was under a severe circumstances and no doubt, there is a big possibility that soldiers were all around the place. Like what someone said in the class discussion, “who knows there are guns pointing at them”.
As we boarded the bus
bags on both sides
(I had never packed two bags before on a vacation lasting forever)
This supports my point that the author was forced to smile because the author attributed this trip to be a forever vacation. Meaning, at some point, she probably was told that they will never be able to come back to their home anymore. The author probably had also been told by her parents about the situation and where they probably will be sent to. She probably was also told that she has to obey everything that was told otherwise, bad things could happen to her or the family.
I think the hidden message in this poem is that the rights of Japanese American has been taken away. They do not have right to stay in their home. Neither the right to smile on their own will. They have to follow whatever they were told to do even a fake smile to hide their real feeling.
Works Cited:
Yamada, Mitsuye. "Evacuation." Camp Notes. Print.
Hi Gina,
ReplyDeleteI like the way you tried to compare those you got during your high school, with those you’re learning from this class. However, I even didn’t know about the Camps, nor there was one period of history about Japanese of this. I feel sorry about those Japanese Americans, and they should not take any responsibility of their nation’s history default.
About last week’s reading, all of them were about acknowledging the discriminating between Americans and Japanese based on the World War II history. The same as you, I also took Mitsuye Yamada’s poem of “Evacuation” from her book Camp Notes and Other Writings as my example to post on my blog last week.
Hey, let's move on...
ReplyDeleteShe was forced to smile becuase living in the camp is one thing that had been permitted already. All the Japanese living there shold not be happy at all. Also, all of their behaviors had been looking over by the police all the time. They did not have freedom in the camp. our nattor was obedient to smile because at that time, responding to smile was the only way the she could safely go through under that policyman.
It was a dark part of American history, and because of the camp, some Japanese American did suffer from this event, and the United States also couldn't escape from being critized.
I actually had a conversation yesterday about the Japanese internment camps in my capstone course. Our theme is “Issues in Education,” and we were talking about cognitive dissonance. If you don’t know what this is, cognitive dissonance is when your reality is broken by new information. We talked about how many of us learned extensively about the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, but most of us didn’t even come across the Japanese Internment camps until a very late age. In my case, the only reason that I learned about them was because I went to a Japanese Internment camp exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles when I was there for the National Federation of Temple Youth National Conference in 2007. It was never brought up in my US History course, and if I hadn’t seen the exhibit, I would never have known about it. The fact of the matter is that most US History books are right up there with the propaganda that you presented in class. Instead of showing the truth, they sort of skirt the issue, make it sound like it was for the good of the country, or they just don’t cover it at all. I stand by what I said in class that we as a nation were right up there with the Nazis when we created these internment camps. Yes, we didn’t kill the Japanese in bulk, but we did take their pride, and we made them feel inferior.
ReplyDeleteHello Gina, I was reading through your blog and you bring up a really interesting point about the photos that were taken of the interned Japanese. I have been researching the topic for the past month because my presentation project is on Executive Order 9066. One of the points I came across is when they were photographed they were told to smile for the camera. This is so misleading, those people had to of been miserable. I cannot begin to imagine being uprooted from my home and exiled to some camp in a unfamiliar location. One of the poems we read last week called “Cincinnati” talks about a woman who was relocated to Cincinnati from the west coast and the fear she was experiencing in Government Square. My heart goes out to the Japanese Americans in that time of trauma.
ReplyDeleteYour blog was well written and very informative. Thank you for your insight Gina. I look forward to reading your next blog.