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? Or am I American?” The internment camps that Gruenewald was placed and like most Japanese Americans were huge camps surrounded …show more content…
The Isseri were Japanese people who immigrated to America, for example Gruenewald parents. Niseri are the American born child born from the Isseri. In the beginning of the imprisonment of the Japanese people the both the Isseri and Niseri had a hard time dealing with their current situation and some dealt with it worst then others for example Mrs. Sato who was acquaintance with Gruenewald and her family came in their apartment and stated to cry out “I can’t stand the heat, the awful food, the dust storms, the lack of privacy, and I can’t sleep and get any relief at night. I hate everything about this place.” Mrs. Sato reaction was what most people in the camp experience in the camp. Gruenewald parents on the other hand handle the experience a little different from others stated my Gruenewald her parents would always say “Yes, it is difficult, isn’t it? I have those same concerns. All we can do now is hope that all this will end son and we can all go home.” When the Japanese were locked up they all were giving a questionnaire which two types where giving out one for the Isseri and the other for the Niseri. Both of the asked if both groups would swear allegiance to the United States and the Niseri were giving a question if they were willing to serve in the military and this is what divided the Niseri. The ones who said yes later serve the military and their reason was to show their loyalty to the …show more content…
What the benefits of using Gruenewald’s memoir is that we get the emotions that she felt during the time and what she thought of the situation she was in. With the memoir we are able to get what a general normal day was for her and everyone in the camp. The downside of using her memoir is that she is trying to remember something that happen decades ago and all the events could be tweaked from her not remembering one hundred percent of what happen. Another downside of using her memoir is she could be bias about what happen for somethings. The benefit of adding a government document is that we would be able to see what they were thinking during the whole process of the interment and what others thought of the interment that the Japanese-Americans went though, for example I would have liked what the government thought when they started to think of what to do after the attack on Pearl Harbor, their discussion on the questionnaire they gave out to all the camps, the release thoughts they had when they released all the people in the camps, and what they thought would be a good apology to give out to the
“The truth was, at this point Papa did not know which way to turn. In the government 's eyes a free man now, he sat, like those black slaves you hear about who, when they got word of their freedom at the end of the Civil War, just did not know where else to go or what else to do and ended up back on the plantation, rooted there out of habit or lethargy or fear” (Farewell to Manzanar, ----). Papa was just one victim of injustice. After the Japanese dropped a bomb on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1947, all Japanese Americans were relocated to internment camps. President Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, ordering that all people of Japanese ethnicity because the government viewed them as a threat to national security.
As opposed to righteous view that America was safeguarding its position in the war, the Japanese American internments were created out of resentment and racial prejudice fostered by other Americans. As the article “Personal Justice Denied” stated, the internments were led by “widespread ignorance of Japanese Americans contributed to a policy conceived in haste and executed in an atmosphere of fear and anger at Japan” (Doc E, 1983). It may seem like a precautionary cause to make internments but there aren’t any other extreme measures for other fronts. Caused by a hatred stirred by media and society’s view, many people disdain the Japanese.
Many Americans saw the internment camps through the government’s persuasion. The United States made the internment camps sound enjoyable and humane, they made documentaries showing the camps showing nothing but happy individuals when there was really a hidden fear. Matsuda opened the eyes of many Americans showing how hard it was to live in the camps and how mentally cruel it could be. Matsuda reveals what it is like during World War II as a Japanese American, through family life, emotional stress, long term effects of interment, and her patriotism and the sacrifices she had to make being in the internment
Just because of the way they look like. Shortly after that they forced into an internment camp where other people like them stayed. Allowing to only receive a few censored letters from the children’s father who was alleged to be a Japanese spy according to the US Government. Together they struggle to
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 internment of Japanese Americans during WWII was not justified. After Pearl Harbor, many Americans were scared of the Japanese Americans because they could sabotage the U.S. military. To try and solve the fear President Franklin D Roosevelt told the army in Executive order 9066 to relocate all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. They were relocated to detention centers in the desert. Many of them were in the detention centers for three years.
When put into the Japanese Internment Camps, Japanese-Americans were held at gunpoint and forced to leave their homes. After they were released from the camps, Japanese-Americans didn’t have a home to go back to. Not to mention the fact that the Nazi Concentration Camps left survivors mentally damaged and some mentally and physically disabled while the Japanese Internment Camps left survivors in a stable condition. In the Nazi Concentration Camps, prisoners were used as test subjects and those who did survive were left mentally or physically disabled. Even then,
Farewell to Manzanar, written by Jeanne Wakatsuki and her husband James D. Houston, brings the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor to life through the the reimaging of the hardships and discrimination that Jeanne and her family endured while stationed at Manzanar. After the events of Pearl Harbor, seven year-old Jeanne is evacuated with family to an internment camp in which the family will be forced to adapt to a life in containment. Through the writings of Jeanne herself, readers are able to see Jeanne’s world through her words and experience the hardships and sacrifices that the Wakatsuki family had to go through. Farewell to Manzanar takes the reader on a journey through the eyes of a young American-Japanese girl struggling to be accepted by society.
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.
How would you feel if one day you were told to leave your whole life behind to live in captivity just because people halfway across the world did something wrong? This horror story was all too true for the thousands of Japanese Americans alive during World War II. Almost overnight, thousands of proud Japanese Americans living on the west coast were forced to leave their homes and give up the life they knew. The United States government was not justified in the creation of Japanese internment camps because it stripped law-abiding American citizens of their rights out of unjustified fear.
December 7th of 1941 America would face a horrific scene in their own homeland, the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor with their Air Force not once but twice. That same day President John F. Kennedy would decide to place the Japanese Americans, living in the country at the time, in internment camps. The civilians would not have a clue what they would be put up against, now they would have to encounter various obstacles to make sure they would be able to survive. “The camps were prisons, with armed soldiers around the perimeters, barbed wire. and controls over every aspect of life”(Chang).
Life of a Japanese American was harsh and scary because you never knew what the mad people would do. Japanese Americans shouldn’t have been punished because most of them were born and raised on the West Coast. They had to sell their homes, stores, and most of their assets because they could not be certain their homes and livelihoods would still be there on their return. It made no difference that many had never been to Japan because Japananese American veterans of WW1 were forced to leave. The fear was that if Japanese invaded the west coast of America, they would be loyal to Japan instead of the U.S.
Japanese internment camps made us question who was really an American and it relates to today’s issues. Internment camps were similar to concentration camps or prison and Japanese-Americans were put into them. Even though they were considered Americans, they were still treated unfairly by other Americans. So who is American?
Yuri Kochiyama is a Japanese-American civil rights activist, and author of “Then Came the War” in which she describes her experience in the detention camps while the war goes on. December 7th, is when Kochiyama life began to change from having the bombing in Pearl Harbor to having her father taken away by the FBI. All fishing men who were close to the coast were arrested and sent into detention camps that were located in Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota. Kochiyama’s father had just gotten out of surgery before he was arrested and from all the movement he’d been doing, he begun to get sick. Close to seeing death actually, until the authorities finally let him be hospitalized.
Japanese-Americans living on the west coast were savagely and unjustifiably uprooted from their daily lives. These Japanese-Americans were pulled from their jobs, schools, and home only to be pushed to