Nationality can be acquired by birth within the jurisdiction of a state, by inheritance from parents, or by a process of naturalization. However, no matter what nationality you are, you will never be able to change your race. Race describes genetically divergent populations of humans that can be marked by common phenotypic and genotypic traits. Some people can take advantage of their race; others have to suffer greatly with their race. The readings of this week are mainly about Japanese in the United States during the World War II. Civilians are always the victims of any social turbulence. What have they done wrong? Most of the people just want to have a normal life; to have a complete home where they do not have to worry about where they will be the next moment.
Evacuation
As we boarded the bus
bags on both sides
(I had never packed two bags before on a vacation lasting forever)
the Seattle Times
photographer said
Smile!
so obediently I smiled
and the caption the next day read:
Note smiling faces
a lesson to Tokyo.
It is so sad to read this poem where people were evacuated from their home due to the war between Japan and United States. Although they were sad and anxious about what will happen to them next, they were asked to smile. It is a smile with bitterness because nobody wants to be kicked out of their own community. I feel like the author of the poem was forced to smile since he mentioned that he obediently smiled to the photographer. Also, I think the exclamation mark could mean that the action was instead a command. The title of this poem is “Evacuation” however; the poem ended up with a note that says smiling faces a lesson to Tokyo. It is just an illusion that the media want to deliver to the public that evacuating Japanese or Japanese American is under their will or they are happy to be relocated.
Curfew
In our area
was a block head
who told us
what’s what
in a warden’s helmet.
Turn off your lights
it’s curfew time!
I was reading
with a flashlight
under my blanket
but the barracks boards
in the hot sun
had shrunk slyly
telling
bars of light
Off with your lights
There must be no lights
There is no freedom when people were put into the control camp. They have no freedom for everything even reading books. All the things has to be under controlled and under the instruction of the warden. In other words, people are treated as prisoners and all the rights have been taken away. Also, reading is a transgressive act and this will be the heaviest punishment to the Japanese or Japanese Americans locked in the control camp because they were being decivilized. What else can these people do after they were released? They can only become another Chinese men since what they only know to do are rough works.
The poem “Cincinnati” is the story after Japanese Americans were released from the control camp. However, due to the level of hatred, Japanese American or Japanese immigrants were still largely discriminated. It is interesting that the author started the poem by telling “I walked against the rush hour traffic. My first day in real city where no one knew me.” and ended the poem with the phrase “Everyone knew me.” “Dirty jap” “I” in the story was offended by the people in the city because he is Japanese. Although people don’t know this person, but people know Japanese in general, and they are the enemy of the public.
Works Cited
Yamada, Mitsuye. "Evacuation." Camp Notes. Print.
Yamada, Mitsuye. "Curfew." Camp Notes. Print.
Yamada, Mitsuye. "Cincinnati." Camp Notes. Print.
7 comments:
Arvin: these are insightful analyses of the poems! You're right that both "Evacuation" and "Curfew" are about the extent to which internees' power and dignity were taken away. But I also like how you notice that in both poems, the internees resist their situation in small ways and exercise agency: by smiling bitterly instead of genuinely, and by reading with a flashlight after lights-out.
The pictures taken of the relocation processes seemed to me to be really complicated. There is part of me that says the government doesn’t enforce mandatory state laws to educate students of the Japanese relocations because they are trying to hide it because something has been done that America can’t be proud of. There is also another part of me that wonders what the government’s side of the story might be on the issue.
I’m not attempting to justify anything that has been said or done, I am just curious how we know what to believe. How do we know the whole truth of what really happened? So far we aren’t even sure the pictures portray a corresponding contribution to the truth.
I know that people go to the camps now and they are in poor condition, but what about then? Also, consider the time length and materials they had to accommodate the Japanese. The Japanese went to these camps without putting up a fight, and I have to wonder why that is.
Is it because they would be safer in the camps than they would in the comfort of their own homes? (Could a reason that the government made the camps be to make the Japanese safer or at least feel safer?) I just wonder why no resistance was put up against these camps, and why wouldn’t the Japanese just go home if they were going on a “vacation lasting forever?” If the camps were so terrible, why would they want to stay in America as opposed to fleeing the country? I wish I knew the missing pieces of this story, so I could make it all make sense.
Great analysis of the poems! I do like how you said most people wanted a normal life. I think the Japanese American internees had normal lives before being forced into the internment camps but I also like to think that even though it was very hard for them, they did their best to make life inside the camps as normal for them as possible too because they still wanted to live their lives as normally as they could despite being trapped inside the internment camps. I do agree though reading the poems was very sad because it gives you an idea of what they had to endure by being in the internment camps that they were put into. You could easily sense through the poems that life in the camps was really difficult for them. I think they were asked to smile in photographs because it was America’s way of trying to show that they weren’t forcing Japanese American citizens into the camps even though they were. I think photographers asked them to smile in the pictures because America wanted to keep it’s good image by trying to portray that they weren’t doing anything wrong and that Japanese Americans were happy to be in the camps even though most of them, if not all of them probably hated being stuck in the camps. I do agree with Jessica in the sense that they probably were safer in the camps cause of all the discrimination towards the Japanese at the time. It definitely probably prevented riots and murders from happening towards Japanese Americans by other U.S. citizens. However, despite the fact that the camps may have kept them safer, they still should have been better taken care of in the camps by providing them with items that will help make living in the camps more comfortable and easier for them. I think they definitely should have provided them with teachers for the schools inside the camps and they definitely should have provided them with milk, as I mentioned in my Power Point presentation when discussing the story I found of the mother who had to feed her newborn baby water for ten days because the government did not provide milk to the camps so she was unable to feed her newborn infant milk.
I really like your analysis. I also feel really sorry to those Japanese American at that period, or in general the victims of the war. I feel sympathy to those people inside the camp where their rights of a normal citizen has been taken off. Everyone wants freedom and being centralized in a small camp with limited food supply and daily activities are very cruel. When I read “Evacuation” and “Curfew” it reminds me part of Philippines’ history. When President Marcos rule the Philippines under martial law, the whole country seems to be a “big camp” where every activities are being watched and restricted and people have to obey everything, such as curfew.
Nonetheless, in the situation of centralized the Japanese Americans, it is a humiliation for the spirit of “Patriotism”. It seems to me that the situation demonstrated the parents (America) were restricting their children (Japanese American) and not trusting them for anything. I believed the Japanese American at that time were not only frustrating and disappointing, but also broken heart. Nobody inside the camp can complain anything, because they don’t have those rights just like the other kids who born and raised in America. This is just because their parents were not Asian. I think both the adults and the kids were strongly affected by this action. For the short-term effect, the adults have hard time to survive in a severe condition; while for the long-term effect, the kids will be growing up with bad memories, discriminated looks, incomplete childhood, and/or lack of education
Hello Arvin,
First off, I would like to say that I really enjoyed your first paragraph. I thought that it was very insightful. Your thoughts on race sparked a few thoughts in my head. Since race is something one is unable to choose, race can become a thing of power, or a burden. I couldn’t imagine how the Japanese felt when they were being taken away from their homes simply because they were Japanese. It almost would bring sense of shame to one’s race and culture. This reminds me of one of our early readings that we did “American Born Chinese”. Jin Wang transforms himself into a different Race and surrounds himself with a different culture because he was ashamed of who he was. I wonder if the Japanese felt this way, and if they would have given up their identity in order to lead a normal life in America?
Evacuation was on of the my favorite poems that we did in the readings this week. The poem has an up beat feel to it, when in fact, it is actually a very sad poem. The poem shows how obedient and willing the Japanese were to cooperate with America during the evacuation, despite what they were going through. Also, the poem shows how deceiving America was being, making the Japanese force a smile in order to create a sense of happiness during the relocation. What I wonder though, is why the smiles would be “a lesson to Tokyo.”. Does this mean to show Tokyo that their own people are happy in America, doing whatever they are told. Or are the photos of relocations supposed to hold a different meaning such as, don’t come to America (your people are happy leaving, not coming in)? The last part kind of through me for a loop.
You definitely brought this poem home for me. People definitely do judge you based off of the color of your skin. I am asked at least once a week if I am of Mexican descent strictly because I have naturally deep tan skin and dark hair. I tend to laugh it off because I know that I am mostly Eastern European, but the judgment is still there. We as people rely heavily on our sense of sight when making assumptions of people’s heritage. Unfortunately, there are biases towards every race, though some may be more positive or negative than others. I am proud that I live in a country that has grown to accept everyone regardless of their race. That being said, I admit that I am upset that it has taken the majority of our country’s existence to get there. I can’t imagine what it could have been like to have been the people in the excerpts you wrote about. To be told when to turn off your lights, even when to smile, is definitely not part of what I take pride in. If our country truly cared about equality for all, we would not have forced an innocent group of people like the Japanese into barracks where they were forced to turn off their lights at a certain time or made to look happy when they were actually miserable or confused. I wish that we could change history so that something like this had never happened, but the reality is that there are just some things you can’t control.
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