Blog 8- Internment Memorial Revised(fact correction)

The Japanese Internment Memorial done by Ruth Asawa, a Bay Area award-wining Japanese American sculptor, can be overwhelming to any passerby. From a distance, her bronze colored wall looks uninhabited, but as one walks closer hundreds of images relating to the imprisonment of the Japanese, two-thirds presumably American appear. Three images stood out to me. The first image showed U.S. guards drawing their guns on Japanese Americans citizens arriving by train to the Internment camps. The second picture showed soldiers at the Internment camps looking down from their stoops, observing the Japanese prison which was patrolled 24/7. The last image was of the family, eating dinner in the wooden cottages, which was a very uncomfortable place to live. They had no beds, no privacy, minimal personal belongings, two windows, one door, and one set of steps. Most Japanese Americans were not angry over this treatment, though they certainly had a right to be. Many just wanted to prove that they were good patriotic U.S. citizens.

In 1942, San Jose hosted their own Internment camp. Japanese American citizens got registered at the Yoshihiro Uchida Hall which is SJSU old gym. The building was used to collect and register Japanese Americans in the area before they were sent off. Many citizens owned business and homes in the downtown area. Among those residents that were sent was Norman Mineta, who would eventually go on to become the mayor of San Jose.

One might ask what did the Japanese do too have this event occur? Well in 1941 the Japanese bombed a U.S. troop station called Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing thousands. Because of that, The United States government decided it would be a great idea to incarcerate every Japanese-American in the states because they were threatening our national security—President Roosevelt authorized this with Executive Order 9066 in 1942; based on racial prejudice and war hysteria. Their crime—their Japanese ancestry.

It wasn't until 1988 that President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act--a bill that granted the surviving Japanese-American internees a tax-free payment of $20,000 each along with an apology.