I mean, how does no one care about Japanese Internment camps?! The fact that US citizens were held in horse barns and transported simply because they looked like the enemy? Why didn't we do the same to the Germans or Italians?
History is important so we learn from the past, that way we can avoid making the same mistakes. Yet, we seem to rather repeat our past offenses than to learn from them. I'm sad for America, this country that has staked a claim on its melting pot of cultures but really it's a classification system. Someone once told me that if I had a problem with the way the United States runs, I can leave. Just because I see problems with this country doesn't mean I should leave. Perhaps because I've had to face life with reality and not rosed colored glasses, I can help those that still believe America was founded on simple principles. I can help you understand that an entire body of people was systematically annihilated by settlers. We can discuss how genocide was committed against the Native Americans or how Teddy Roosevelt allowed the deaths of Filipino boys during the American Expansion. The winners always get to tell the story and sometimes those stories are wrong. It doesn't make us a worse people because it was what governments did back in the day but it does help create a better picture to figuring out why The United States is protested in so many places around the world.
My heart is heavy for the suffering of my own people and the death of a culture I will never understand.
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3 comments:
I'm not proud of some of the choices our country has made in the past but I believe that they made choices based on what they knew - and what they believed to be right. And do you not know what the Japanese did to the POW's in WWII? They starved, beat, and killed thousands of Americans because they wanted world domination. They sent spies into America to gain information and then used it against us - no wonder the Americans took the Japanese as prisoners.
The Axis power did the same to our soldiers in Europe. "I believe they made choices based on what they knew" is like saying it was okay for segregation to exist for as long as it did because it was all "they knew" back in the day. I think it's time we say hey, we really messed up and we should talk about these things because they are worth mentioning. Many of the Japanese detained in the US were citizens, had been here for many generations, were doctors, lawyers, nurses, and wanted to be American like everyone else. Their property was seized (they were never given back what the government took from them, like ever) and no one apologized. It was wrong. It was racist. **I love hearing from you Tiff and I hope you don't mind political differences! Ha.
Great discussion, Ruby! I have had similar thoughts about our generation, but fear not, we may not be the WORST generation just yet :) The fabric of America's history is patterned with several racially driven events that have had serious, yet not often honored, consequences. The internment of Japanese Americans was horrible and baseless. The internment survivors and their surviving kin have received formal apologies by the US Government as well as reparation in excess of $1.8 Billion dollars. Just like in German history books, where the Nazi revolution is not highly regarded and thus not highly discussed, the same can be said about our historical highlights. The history books are written by winners. Thankfully for the internet and other non-biased sources for information, our youth is getting the large take away points from these episodes; don't trust ANYTHING blindly, ask questions, the government is a combination of people and ideas that can be changed at any moment. Hopefully our education will start to develop more successfully to cater to the way that we now process our information and we can understand how and why learning has changed with the development of computers and the internet (since we are still basing a lot of our education largely on the idea that there is NOT an internet and we need to test students on memorizing facts instead of instill tools and technique to facilitate true learning (I could rant about this all day, lol)) I do believe that an emphasis on history and language arts and arts in general needs to be taken more largely into consideration if we want to continue to produce well rounded individuals. The country cannot shirk away from it's mistakes in the past, and more importantly we all need to learn how to truly understand the motives behind what drives these kinds of decisions, or they will surely be made again. xoxo
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