Semester 2: Blog 10

My mother and father were born after WW2 had ended, so I asked how WW2 had affected my grandparents, and it had not. They lived in Iraq so they were not impacted directly by the war, the impact might have been knowing Jews or people fighting in the war, but my family had no such relations.

Semester 2: Honors Blog

Dear Yoshisuke Sakuri,
You are living in North Dakota so I was not sure if you knew about the evacuation of all the American-Japanese on the West Coast. They had only given us a two day warning and we were only able to bring a few of our things with us. It was thievery, the money those rats gave us for our things was close to nothing, but what could we do. They made father leave his job. They took us all to an assembly center, then they took me and mother to one internment camp, and father and my brother, Hashoi, to a different one. Apparently after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an Executive Order. The Japanese living in America had been tried and found guilty of something we are not sure about, but we are a threat according to the national security. They think that we are spying for Japan. As far as I know, none of my friends have done anything of the sort, and none of them have been acting any different before this all happened.
We are living in a desert, I have no idea where it is but it does not seem like there are many other people out here other than us. They keep us in these shabby barracks and there is barbed wire fences surrounding us with military men. They have huge rifles and they can be disrespectful to us. Each day the food we get does not taste like food. I have already lost weight and I feel weak and exhausted all the time. The older people are not doing so well here. We have nothing to do, and we can do nothing. It has been three months here and mother is starting to lose hope. We both feel as if we are going to die here. People have died already from malnutrition. They also do not provide medication for the people that need them. We cannot complain or say anything though. If we do anything that they do not like, they will send us to the Tule Lake facility. They also have us take oaths that, for men and boys, we will serve the American army, and for women and girls, they will serve the army as nurses, and if we do not take that oath they send use to the Tule Lake facility too. It is not fair living here. There is no justice for us. I do not feel safe here. The guards have killed a girl because she was being "troublesome". I fear that they can deem anybody troublesome and kill them with no repercussions.
I do not understand why they are punishing us for something we have not done. I wonder about my father and brother all the time. I wanted to tell you all this in case something happens to me. After the war is over I want you to show this to people if I am dead and get justice for all of us that had to go through this.
Sincerely,
Juro Kai.

Sites
http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW2/japan_internment_camps.htm

http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/camp.html

http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/index.html

Blog 9: WW2 imagery

This propoganda is used to get people's emotions involved. It is pretty much telling anyone in the war to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases. I personally thought this was funny because the government was looking out for its military, only so that they can use them for their own needs which will most likely hurt them.

This photo was taken by Arthur Green. The nazis torpedoed the USS MENGES in the Mediterranean and this coast guard seaman died at his battle station. To me the picture is depressing because of the way he is dead. He is hanging almost upside down with his head faced toward the ground.

This was drawn by Arthur Szyk. It is a caricature of the Axis Powers. This poster is from 1942 and shows Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo holding hypodermic needles. Soldiers were given shots sometimes before going on their leave. I thought this was kind of funny because the Axis Powers have nothing to do with sexually transmitted disease, but the poster is connecting them to it.

Semester 2, Blog 8: Honors

In a well developed, thoughtful piece of writing that uses direct quotes, explain the relationship between your honors novel and the time period that fostered it's creation.

My novel, Native Son, by Richard Wright, took place in the 1930's when there was still segregation and a large amount of racism. The main character, Bigger, is constantly thinking about about the priveleges white people have and the ones that black people don't have. In the beginning of the book when Bigger and his friend Gus are looking up at a jet in the sky Gus says, "If you wasn't black and if you had some money and if they'd let you go to that aviation school, you could fly a plane." (Wright 17). At that time African Americans were not able to do many things that white people were able to, and if they were able to do something like go to school, they most likely could not afford it. When the Dalton family find that their daughter Mary has gone missing they call a detective. The detective interrogates Bigger and accuses him of being a communist. When he is done interrogating Bigger, Bigger goes up to his room and listens to what Mr. Dalton and the detective Britten are saying. He overhears Britten say, "To me, a nigger's a nigger." (Wright 163). Britten implies that because Bigger is black, he must have something to do with Mary's disappearance. This also shows that at that time period, blacks were not looked at as individuals, but more a stereotyped whole that is ignorant uneducated people who are likely to do bad things. The whole novel is based on the discrimination of African Americans at that time. They were put into bad living conditions because people like Mr. Dalton who owned the housing would not allow black people to live in the nicer apartments and also raised the price for how much the families pay. Communism was also big at that time and there was propoganda to make people fear and hate communists. Native Son in almost every way is written because of the time period and everything in the novel has to do with what things were like for African Americans in the 1930's.