You find yourself trapped amongst barbed wire fences and guards armed with machine guns with an order to shoot lest you try to escape. After moving from smelly horse stables, your family is currently cramped into a cluttered 20 ft x 20 ft barrack with no running water or electricity. As you feel your stomach growl, you walk to the prison camp’s mess hall, where you are greeted with unfamiliar American foods: potatoes and pickled food. You miss your mother’s warm, home-cooked Japanese meals. Upon using the restrooms, you feel a hot flush creeping up your neck as your private business no longer feels private when you find yourself in an unpartitioned restroom with 9 other people. As you venture out to school, you shiver, trying to keep yourself warm in the -28 degree winter weather. Around you, a father with glaucoma and a grandfather with colon cancer desperately seek urgent medical attention, only to be denied outside help, resulting in permanent eye damage and death respectively. You look around you and wonder, “What did we do to deserve this?”
This is a snapshot into the lives of those living in Japanese American internment camps. To give context, the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War 2 led to a paranoia and fear of Japanese Americans. “Japs,” a derogatory term used by nativist Americans was used to ostracize immigrants and citizens of Japanese descent with public billboards saying “Bye Bye Japs!” Ultimately, this accumulated into Executive Order 9066, which gave every person in the country with any amount of Japanese ancestry one week to move. Some Japanese Americans were forced to sell their houses and stores at absurdly low prices, losing their property and businesses. Eventually, 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated.
Amongst them was Sam Mihara, a 9 year old boy who lived in San Francisco, California, experienced first-hand the forceful relocation of his family to Heart Mountain in Wyoming, one of the 10 relocation centers that housed Japanese Americans on the West Coast. His life underwent drastic changes when going to grammar school and adventures with friends were replaced with life within barbed wire fences and difficult living circumstances. Despite this, Mr. Mihara lives on, now traveling the world to tell his story and spread publicity on his life at these camps.
Now, he given talks in over 450 schools to over 90,000 students in the U.S., Asia, and Europe, one of which being Francis Lewis High School. In an event organized by the U.S. History teacher and dean Ms. Marquez along with funding from the PTA, students at this school in Queens were able to listen to the first hand account of Mr. Mihara’s experience living through this difficult time in American history for those of Japanese ancestry.
Through listening to Mr, Mihara’s speech, Junior Kenji Matsumoto found value in learning more about his own Japanese heritage.
“It provided more information to me as a Japanese descent since I didn’t know much about Japanese history even though I’m Japanese,” said Matsumoto. “It gives young students knowledge of the past, especially when it’s a first hand account who went through the experiences of the past. They can really tell a trustworthy story without any [biases or misinterpretations from] second hand accounts.”
Assistant Principal (AP) of Social Studies Ms, McGuirk agrees that a first-hand account really brings history to life, impacting students in deep, meaningful ways.
“That power of storytelling is so powerful, it’s so moving and that’s the stuff that students remember, right?” said Ms. McGuirk. “That’s what you’re gonna remember when you graduate and 10 years from now. You’re not gonna remember the lesson your teacher did on World War 2, but you might remember like, wow, I remember when that Japanese Internment guest speaker came and you know, it really moved me when he talked about the power of forgiveness and the power of still having faith in humanity.”
In the speech, a major issue Mr. Mihara touched upon was the Asian hate he had faced, which only intensified after he had returned home from the internment camps and led to the isolation of Japanese Americans from American society.
“That was a real main problem when we got home, the hate against us was worse than when we left,” said Mr. Mihara. “In fact, they put up signs that said don’t come home, you don’t belong here, go somewhere else. So, we were treated very badly returning to our neighborhoods, but we did the best we could. Our parents, especially, focused on the children getting a good education to get good jobs in order to help solve a problem.”
Over time, Mr. Mihara does state that discrimination has gotten better as time passed, now that blatant signs mocking Asian Americans are no longer a norm.
“Today I don’t see any real major signs of hatred. I don’t see cartoons [highlighting ethnic groups in a negative light], so it is much better. The media has standards on what to do and what not to show, so they’re doing a better job.”
Despite this, Japanese student Matsumoto has experienced differential treatment as a result of his heritage, highlighting the ongoing issue of covert racial discrimination today.
“There were a few occasions where I have been treated differently due to my cultural identity. Basically, back then, some people would make fun of my name or culture just because I’m Asian. They were kids at the time so I didn’t really care much since I didn’t know what it meant. However, when I grew up, I finally got to realize what they were saying; But it didn’t affect me since I didn’t care about it much.”
While we claim to advance as a society and move away from the discriminatory past, history repeats itself.
“We said never again with the Holocaust,” said Ms. McGuirk. “Have there been other genocides? Yes. We said enough with discrimination, right? And we had the Civil Rights Act. Did that end discrimination against African Americans? No. So these things echo and they continue and that’s what happens in history…”
Social Studies Teachers Ms. Gattung and Ms. Lynch noticed that Mr. Mihara used his story to bring awareness to modern examples of racial discrimination such as the migrant crisis and Asian hate today.
“He [Mr. Mihara] brought it back to like migrants and stuff now,” said Ms. Gattung. “He made it relevant to nowadays and like that’s our own home country. And there are people being put in basically similar situations that he experienced, 70 to 80 years ago. Also, there’s been an uptake in Asian hate crimes since COVID, so it’s very important for us to look at it.”
Ms. Marquez agrees, stating how America is repeating the same mistakes of the past through how our country has handled the migrant crisis.
“It was kind of hard to hear because you kind of don’t think things like that happen in the United States, but they do happen. And they’re even happening now with migrants at the border. So I think it’s important not to pretend that history didn’t happen and learn from it, even though clearly we’re not learning from it.”
On a more positive note, Ms. Gattung and Ms. Lynch believe that through listening to the voices of those who were silenced in the past, we can work towards positive change.
“It’s wildly important because there are so many marginalized groups in particular in this country and across the globe, and we have to hear their voices,” said Ms. Gattung and Ms. Lynch. “If we don’t hear their voices and we don’t see them as fellow human beings that are deserving of equality and respect, then we’re not going to be able to make the positive change that we need to make.”
After hearing Mr. Mihara’s speech, many students and teachers were taken aback by Mr. Mihara’s forgiveness towards the US government and optimism towards the future.
“And for him to be this young child, right?” said Ms. McGuirk. “That was taken away from his home, everything taken away from him, forced to live in this camp, terribly discriminated against for him to still have hope and humanity. And to end it by saying he still loves the United States. I was just like, wow. like, it’s such a learning experience too, to say like, we all have something, right?
Mr. Mihara’s speech can open up greater discussion on this issue, which is the first step towards change.
“I think bringing about any awareness to a topic gets people talking and when you get people talking, you get people thinking about how to make things better and how to improve upon things,” said U.S. History teacher Ms. Heuschneider. “I think keeping the conversation open, even though sometimes it can be uncomfortable, is always a good thing because it does lead to positive change. Sometimes when we learn and we grow personally as ourselves and through history, we have to get a little uncomfortable and that’s how we become better people.”
Despite the ongoing racial discrimination, Matsumoto believes that speeches such as the ones given by Mr. Mihara raise awareness, which can help the younger generation learn from the past and prevent similar issues from taking place again.
“Maybe some people in America still have hatred towards the Japanese for what happened in Pearl Harbor and still want them to be in the internment camp for no reason, ” said Matsumoto. “[However,] the talk definitely raised awareness [for these issues] because I’m sure the U.S. will never do such a thing again by taking away civil rights for no reason, which is unconstitutional.”
