Japanese Internment Essay

Imagine leaving your native home in search for freedom and opportunity in the United States. Everything is looking up until one day your new life is stripped away. You are forced to leave your home, your belongings and potentially your loved ones. This is the experience that many Japanese Americans faced in the 1940s. Approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps during this time. Many have heard the stories of Japanese interment, but some do not know why it happened or what effects these processes had on Japanese Americans. After the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were forced into housing facilities.

At San Jose State University, Yoshiro Uchida Hall was used as a transfer point that evacuated Japanese residents from San Jose and Santa Clara. Some to this day say that the building is haunted because of its involvement in Japanese internment during World War II. To memorialize the internment of the Japanese, Ruth Asawa designed the Japanese American Internment Memorial Sculpture that can be found in front of the Federal Building on Second Street in San Jose. The whole memorial uses vivid imagery to depict the life and trials of being a Japanese American during World War II.

A scene on the right side (if facing the Federal Building) depicts a family of Japanese Americans packing all their belongings and leaving their home. Many Japanese Americans were forced to sell and leave some of their belongings during the internment process. Those who had important family documents sometimes burned their information in order to prevent from being identified as Japanese.

Another scene that shows the chaos that Japanese Americans felt during the interment process is the train scene on the right side of the memorial. The train scene shows Japanese Americans being packed into trains that are already full. Japanese Americans reach out for their friends and families hoping to get one last goodbye. The thought crosses their mind, “will I ever have a chance to see them again.” Soldiers with guns drawn oversee the process of these trains being packed. The Japanese Americans know if they resist, there will be gruesome consequences.

The structure of the memorial gives an overall feel of the process of Japanese internment. Scenes are placed in a chronological order with the earliest scenes starting on the left. As the viewer continues to through the memorial, they will see the attitude of the memorial change from freedom and new opportunities to captivate and dismay. The left portion of the memorial shows soldiers watching over the internment camp as a piece of barbed wire cover the top of the memorial.

After seeing the memorial and hearing about Japanese internment, I believe that something like this could definitely happen again. Various cultures have felt shunned after the 9-11, myself included. The verbal ridicule and scorn that some may experience may not equal the severity of being interned in camps. Although these experiences are different, the current situations are just stepping stones to turning into something more severe.