Japanese Interment Memorial

To be honest, I didn’t know much about Japanese immigrant in California and history behind it until I researched for this assignment. Of course I learned about World War II when I was in Japan, but I never had chance to get to know about Japanese immigrants who were kept in concentration camps in the U.S. around that time. Reading about the history of Japanese interment, I felt sorry for them as same Japanese, and I appreciate the city of San Jose for reserving the memorial like this to remind people the cruelty of such history.

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.”

^{However, key U.S. leaders claimed that all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast of the U.S. posed a risk to national security without evidence. A year earlier, Roosevelt had authorized incarcerating more than 110,000 innocent people based on their ancestry, in what he called “concentration camps.” Although two-thirds were U.S. citizens, they were targeted because of their ancestry and the way they looked.}

Justifying it as a “military necessity,” the government forced U.S. citizens and their immigrant elders to leave their homes and live in camps under armed guard. The United States government feared that Japanese Americans would commit acts of sabotage against their country. Although Japanese Americans never committed such act, some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the Western United States were removed from their homes and made to live in internment camps. Of these, almost 80,000 were United States citizens; 40,000 were children. Ruth Asawa, the artist who made the memorial in San Jose downtown, was one of these citizen children.

Ruth was only 16 when she and her family were interned. It was upheaval experience for her and other Japanese people to lose everything— most importantly their right to freedom and a private, family life— that caused irreparable harm. For Ruth, the internment was the first step on a journey to a world of art that profoundly changed that she was and what she thought was possible in life. In 1994, when she was 68 years old, she reflected on the experience, “I hold no hostilities for what happened; I blame no one. Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the Internment, and I like who I am,” she said.

The memorial contains two sides of extremely detailed vignettes in a sort of time line layout portraying Japanese American life. One side of the panel depicts their peaceful life doing agriculture while the other shows their painful experiences being kept in concentrate camps. Each vignette tells story with emotion that reflects their suffer and power to live for their future. The one sight that really grabbed my attention is Japanese guys sitting in the circle in front of graveyards. I’m not exactly sure why so many people died there, but thinking about their life ended up dying in the camp makes me grieve.

Walking around the SJSU campus, I noticed that there is a building whose name is Japanese and was wondering the story behind it. According to Spartan Daily, San Jose State University's Yoshihiro Uchida Hall served as a midpoint for evacuating residents from San Jose and Santa Clara.

In December of 1944 the Japanese internment policy was revoked. By 1947, 40 businesses and 100 families had re-established themselves in this area.

As a Japanese, it was a great opportunity for me to know other Japanese people who experienced that hard period of time in California. Knowing that there are many Japanese people around this area, I’ve never thought about their backgrounds and history. I really hope this extreme tragedy will never happen again, and we should keep this memory in our minds that this unbelievable thing actually happened at the place we live not long ago.