Japanese Internment Memorial Essay

The Japanese American Internment was the forced relocation and internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry by the United States government during World War II. About 110,000 Japanese Americans living on the west coast were forced from their homes and shipped to internment camps in the Midwest.
In San Jose many Japanese were taken from Japan Town. The Yoshiro Uchida Hall at San Jose State was used as a transfer point that evacuated Japanese residents from San Jose and Santa Clara.
Ruth Asawa was taken along with her family to one of these internment camps. During her time there she learned art and sculpture and would eventually create the memorial for Japanese Internment.
On our field trip to the memorial I saw many interesting vignettes that had to do with Japanese internment. The first vignette that stood out was a sculpted picture of a ship called the Taiyo Maru docking at Angel Island. The ship had Japanese men, women, and children all huddled together on the deck. The sculpted picture also showed the Japanese families coming off the boat. All were still dressed in traditional Japanese attire such as Kimonos. Many of the Japanese had a lost look on their fast as if they did not know where they were going.
Another vignette that I saw was a couple buses that were in a Japanese neighborhood and were loading Japanese people up in them. The stores in this neighborhood had Japanese writing on them. Every person getting on the bus only had a few belongings with them. Many of these people were women and children. The houses in the neighborhood had signs saying “eviction sale” and there was a bulletin put up in the middle of the neighborhood saying “Japanese must report to be interned.”
The third vignette that I thought stood out was of six Japanese American soldiers cooking by a fire. They looked cold so I assume that they were in the European front the war. This vignette symbolized all the Japanese men who enlisted in the army even while their families were being interned. This vignette also showed many graves that symbolized all the Japanese American soldiers that died during the war. It also showed a weeping family that had lost a son in the War and was being told that by an American army officer.
Overall I thought that that visiting this memorial was a good experience and I learned a lot about Japanese Internment. I believe that something like this could happen again if we let fear, prejudice, and ignorance guide us. Hopefully we will make sure that this injustice never happens again.