George Takei was a young child when
taken from his home and brought to an interment camp during the Second World
War. He remembers the day the soldiers
came to his home armed to bring him to a horse stable until a camp was ready
then he was moved Arkansas until he was later transferred to Northern
California. This second camp was
heavily guarded, as people who were transferred here were considered dangers to
the state based on a survey that had a trick question. The survey was called the “Loyalty
Questionnaire”, how interesting that they question the loyalty of people who
they forced to move and be treated like prisoners. The fact that they got anyone willing to say they would
still fight for the country is nothing short of amazing that even after being
treated like a villain for no reason they were still willing to lay their lives
on the line for a country that disrespected them. Yet, if the two most important questions in the survey
were not answered correctly you would be labeled a traitor. The first asked about bearing arms for
America. The second and the trick
question was: “ will you swear your loyalty to the united states of America and
forswear your loyalty to the emperor of Japan” George makes the point that if
you said no to this question because you could not foreswear a loyalty that you
did not have to begin with, this would label you a traitor or possibly just as
bad that if you answered yes to this question that you were saying that you
used to have ties and gives them reason to have put you in the camp to begin
with.
This relates back to the video that
we saw before class along with the discussion with Margaret and Vicki
Taniwaki. Where Margaret may have
been luckier than Mr. Takei as she was not old enough to remember being moved
out of her home to one of the camps.
Although this point is questionable: which is worse? To be a young child and remember
vaguely being free before seeing the armed guard at your doorstep or to have
your first memory be of life in one of these camps?
To answer your posed question, as we heard from Vicki, who wasn't even born during the concentration camps, the experience impacts her life tremendously. She doesn't feel American because of the way she looks and the way she is treated, but doesn't feel Japanese because of the denial and shame the concentration camps brought upon the Japanese identity. Therefore, I don't think we can say which was worse in terms of the memory of the camps because either way, they still have a very negative impact on many Japanese lives today.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I thought the questionnaire brought up by Mr. Takei is another demonstration of how the concentration camps impacted women differently than men. The question about bearing arms is not a gender neutral question. Takei speaks to this when he talks about why his mother answered the question the way she did. How is a woman with children to say she is willing to fight... would white American women have answered differently to the posed question? I would suspect that the rest of the questionnaire had questions that catered to the dominant patriarchal paradigm (i.e. questions that only white American men could answer accurately and not be considered a threat).