No "Japs" Allowed

How could a group of people be treated so badly in a place that they tried so hard to become a part of? In my "Strangers in a Strange Land" essay I decided to focus my paper on the Japanese migrating to America in their first big wave, and their reception once they got there.

I decided to write about the Japanese because after reading the novel "Southland" by Nina Revoyr and realizing how terribly the Japanese were treated after the bombing at Pearl Harbor. The novel tells a vivid account of the Japanese having to pack and sell all their belongings before being shipped off into internment camps. Such drastic measures performed by the US shocked as I would never fathom internment of an innocent group of people occurring in this time period.

The film that I viewed in my "Los Angeles and the American Dream" lecture entitled "White Rabbit" also prompted me to write this essay on the Japanese because it also depicted the Japanese in internment camps. One scene solidified the Japanese's position in American society during the 1940's as a young Japanese girl told her mother that she was American and not Japanese at all. Her mother's response was, "If you're American, why are you in this camp?" This scene allowed me to realize that no matter how much the Japanese people wanted to assimilate into American society during that time period, they would never be accepted.

Continuing to read more primary sources about the Japanese's experience while attempting to assimilate into American culture will definitely give me more insight into how the Japanese personally felt. However, how could a group of people continue to try and assimilate into a culture that blatantly rejected them? My mindset in this time period as a Japanese would be to leave America and create a new life in Japan (which many Issei did). It has been a long battle for the Japanese to finally become accepted in America, but their persistence paid off in the end thanks to the civil rights movements that took place all of the country in the 1960's.