This letter was another one of the corresponding messages between Miss Breed and Louise Ogawa dating back to September 27, 1942 and sent from the Santa Anita Interment Camp, a racetrack center turned Japanese relocation site during World War II (“700 S.F. Japanese Assemble”). The letter was written by Lousie Ogawa with a personal touch, a letter seemingly written by a friend for another. The purpose of her letter was to thank Miss. Breed for her interest in her life within the internment camp and from there Ogawa moves on to answering questions that were previously addressed to her in a past letter. Such as the materials provided to them within the camp, what she misses about her previous life, and her sources of entertainment within the camp. …show more content…
This source posses a sense of value, as with it, an idea about the treatment of the Japanese within multiple internment facilities can be discovered. In her letter, Ogawa makes small comparisons about the Santa Anita Internment camp to the one, she previously resided in, which was the Poston internment camp which she briefly addresses. She discusses ideas such as the lack of fencing, the ‘grand’ food in which is provided, and the community movie night within Santa Anita that was absent within Poston. Ogawa 's letter to Miss. Breed holds slight limitations, as Ogawa only discusses the highlights of her life in Santa Anita, only glancing upon subjects such as the showing of movies on the weekends and the food served on Sunday mornings. In her letter to Miss. Breed, Ogawa mainly addresses her weekend routine and fails to mention her routine during the other five days. From this the recipient can only picture the camp from a glamorized viewpoint and can only take into account two days out of the seven. More research would need to be done in order to discover what occurs during the five days not discussed by
Subsections (3) and (4) focus on discrimination really show how the Japanese were targeted because of their race. Not only did the government control where the Japanese were going to reside, but also the discrimination that they had to
This book reflects the author’s wish of not only remembering what has happened to the Japanese families living in the United States of America at the time of war but also to show its effects and how families made through that storm of problems and insecurities. The story takes in the first turn when the father of Jeanne gets arrested in the accusation of supplying fuel to Japanese parties and takes it last turn when after the passage of several years, Jeanne (writer) is living a contented life with her family and ponders over her past (Wakatsuki Houston and D. Houston 3-78). As we read along the pages
Like many children her age, the girl in Julie Otsuka’s novel When the Emperor was Divine had the opportunity to attend a “summer camp.” However, the camps that the girl and her family endured were not like traditional summer getaways but instead state-sponsored prisons designed to keep the populace “safe.” Instead of enjoying the water slides and rope swings that other children her age got to experience, the girl struggled with establishing an identity that fit with the rest of her society. With her use of neutral tone and language, Julie Otsuka explores the creation of the cultural identity that is established by the Japanese-American people as they are confined in Concentration camps designed to keep the nation safe. Pulled from their homes,
The young girl is prevented from entering the church where her grandmother has prayers. As a person from the old world, the young girl is not allowed to play with boys from the new world. On the other hand, “in response to executive order” by Dwight Okita is about Americans of Japanese origins that were supposed to report to relocation
Mary Matsuda Gruenewald tells her tale of what life was like for her family when they were sent to internment camps in her memoir “Looking like the Enemy.” The book starts when Gruenewald is sixteen years old and her family just got news that Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japan. After the bombing Gruenewald and her family life changed, they were forced to leave their home and go to internment camps meant for Japanese Americans. During the time Gruenewald was in imprisonment she dealt with the struggle for survival both physical and mental. This affected Gruenewald great that she would say to herself “Am I Japanese?
Matsuda’s memoir is based off of her and her family’s experiences in the Japanese-American internment camps. Matsuda reveals what it is like during World War II as a Japanese American, undergoing family life, emotional stress, long term effects of interment, and her patriotism and the sacrifices she had to make being in the internment camps. Everyone living in Western section of the United States; California, Oregon, of Japanese descent were moved to internment camps after the Pearl Harbor bombing including seventeen year old Mary Matsuda Gruenewald and her family. Matsuda and her family had barely any time to pack their bags to stay at the camps. Matsuda and her family faced certain challenges living in the internment camp.
Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine is a story about a Japanese-American family and their experience in an internment camp in Utah. In the book, the young girl says to her mother “Is there anything wrong with my face?... People were staring” (15). The reader can see from this quote what it was like for the Japanese-Americans during the war. The quote shows how it was not just a national problem; it was a problem for everyone- including making a ten year old girl feel self-conscious.
A soldier tells them to put the shades down. The girl has a brief conversation with a Japanese man who only knows japanese. “The girl shook her head and said she was sorry she only spoke English” (Otsuka, 28) By saying this the girl emphasises the fact that she is a American girl and she has that identity and not just a japanese spy. The soldiers guarding the Japanese-American families makes guarding absurd.
“All the class pictures are in there, from the seventh grade through twelfth, with individual headshots of seniors, their names followed by the names of the high schools they would have graduated from on the outside… ” Although these students, like Houston, were forcefully withdrawn from their schools, her generation, Nisei, were able to overcome these barriers and went on to rebuild their lives. “The Nisei offspring, in their late teens and twenties, still had their lives before them. Despite significant barriers of racism and severe economic setbacks from the incarceration, they focused on building their future and assisting their Issei parents. Many went on to establish successful livelihoods, leading some to portray themselves as a model minority who overcame the wartime hardships.”
As a kid, I’ve heard about Japanese internment and it captivated me. My grandma would tell me how life was like in the internment camp. My fascination with Japanese internment lead me to choose it for National History Day. I wanted to learn more about this important mark in US History. My grandparents, Tom Inouye and Jane Hideko Inouye were put through this
The author, Jeanne Wakatsuki, presents a meaningful story filled with experiences that shaped not only her life, but shaped the lives of thousands of Japanese families living in America. The book’s foreword gives us a starting point in which the reader can start to identify why the book was written. “We a told a New York writer friend about the idea. He said: ‘It’s a dead issue. These days you can hardly get people to read about a live issue.
Manasa Jannamaraju Mrs. Teslich P1 Farewell to Manzanar Essay 23 February, 2016 Dreams, Hopes, and Plans Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, distinguishes the experience of Japanese Americans that were sent to internment camp during World War II. Japanese Americans were moved out of their homes into internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese Americans struggled in the internment camp and the camp changed their lives drastically. This book is all about dreams, hopes, and plans.
On the day of their departure from San Diego, she had handed out stamped, self addressed postcard at the train-station and urged them to write to her once they reached their destination. Through these postcards, Miss Breed was able to regularly send her Nisei friends’ books, care packages, and immeasurable amounts of support. This letter was written by Louise Ogawa and sent from the Poston Interment Camp, one of the largest of the ten American concentration camps built to host Japanese Americans, and addressed to Miss Clara Breed. The letter was dated on two separate occasions, September 3, 1943 and September 5, 1943, due to Ogawa’s insistence to postpone her letter’s dispatch till the arrival of Miss Breed’s own. Ogawa’s letter to Miss Breed was written in a remarkably appreciative tone, as the purpose of her letter was to thank Miss Breed, “from the bottom of [her] heart” for the iron in which she had previously received and to request the total cost of the item.
Written works about American Identity are a very common theme amongst writers, including poet Dwight Okita and short-story writer Sandra Cisneros. Dwight Okita is famous for her poem “In Response to Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers,” in which the theme of American identity is portrayed through a 14-year-old girl. In a similar way, Sandra Cisneros’s short story is told by a young girl of Mexican heritage who prefers American culture—in sharp contrast to her deep-rooted Mexican grandmother. Although the overall theme of the two texts is “American Identity,” both Okita's poem and Cisneros's short story delve deeper and portray that cultural heritage and physical appearances do not determine what it
David Okita, the author of the poem “In Response to Executive Order 9066,” is a published playwright, poet and novelist. He describes himself as Japanese, American, gay, and Buddhist. Okita’s father was a World War II veteran and his mother was held in confinement for four years at a Japanese-American concentration camp. The World War II plays as a significant theme in the poem “In Response to Executive Order 9066”. At first glance, the poem appears to be about an American girl who has an unstable relationship with her friend Denise.