Even though, I have read about the Japanese-American who were sent to reservation camp during the second world war, this is the first time that I read about the Japanese-American and their social conflicts after the second world war.
The most impressive part of this book is the main character Ichiro’s internal-conflict of his identity.
The author, John Okada, vividly depicts Ichiro’s struggles: his feeling of the alienation which comes from the guiltiness of not going to the war and hopelessness of Japanese-American’s low social status in those days.
But then, at the same time, I thought if it’s really necessary to persecute Japanese-American because Japan attacked on the U.S. Actually, not only the U.S, but also many countries take some kinds of operation for those of people from the country which violently against them. But I personally think that this kind of the government’s action intends not mainly for the national security, but for the people’s uplift of fear and morale toward the target of a country.
This book also reminded me an incident after 9.11. A few days or weeks (I do not remember precisely), an East Asian kid was killed by White kids in an elementary school. Obviously, there was no connection between the boy who was killed and the terrorist group, but because of excessive government’s dispositions and media’s day after day broadcasting enhanced people’s sorrow to the anger toward East Asian people in general. A lot of East Asian people had to hung the Star-Spanggled Banners on doors of their houses to show that they were side of the U.S.
That was a really strange situation even for me.
This is totally different topic, but one of the Japan’s current social issues concerning to WW2 is the fewer storytellers of WW2 because it’s been already about 60 years since WW2 ended. So many of the people in those days have passed away already. I read an article about it, and a live storyteller said that it does not necessarily to have experience of wars. People of young generation should try to know and remember what happened in WW2.
The person’s words were pregnant with meaning for me.
