America’s Narrative

When I sat down in Assembly Hall Friday afternoon, I did not realize how important Bryan Stevenson’s messages would be to me. I admired his main point on challenging this country’s justice system, but for me, his message of rewriting America’s “narrative” hit home. 

Although I obviously was not alive during World War II, as a Japanese American, I still experience some of the consequences that generations before me had to deal with. My mother tells me of her Japanese friends who had grandparents sent to internment camps, and even about being born with the classification “alien” under the Alien Enemies Act. 

I have never gotten offended when discussing World War II, even when I learned in elementary school that United States of America was the good guy. Japan was the bad guy. 

In English class, we’re reading “When the Emperor was Divine” by Julie Otsuka, a novel depicting one family’s experience being sent to an internment camp in the middle of Utah. Before coming to Exeter, I simply sat and listened in class, accepting everything I was told to be true. I’ve learned here that sometimes it’s not worth arguing with a classmate. However, in class, I was so overwhelmed by the lack of concern considering the fact that although the Japanese were not forced out of their homes immediately or sent to terrible concentration camps, they were still forced to leave.

I respected my classmates’ opinions. If you think the United States was justified in removing a whole community of people from society, I know I can’t change your mind. However, we never talk about it as much as we should. Bryan Stevenson brought up how the town he grew up in had places where slaves were auctioned and where people were lynched. This was terrorism, but our country doesn’t recognize it.

There are memorials in Germany to recognize the effects of the Holocaust. We don’t recognize the internment camps that were created to “protect Americans.” We pretend that we did nothing wrong—that America is not flawed. Last year in California, many Japanese became alarmed when the memorial for the Manzanar internment camp was to be taken down to allow room for some building to be constructed. The memorial is just a rock, and I never heard about it until my mom told me that many Japanese, including herself, would make pilgrimages. I realized that even though the United States does recognize the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, we don’t really recognize the effects the camps had on the Japanese. After the war—after all of the propaganda made for the war—how did our government expect Japanese Americans to be immersed into society again? 

Most people argue that this isn’t a huge issue.We have bigger problems to deal with in the present day. But how can we do that if our country can’t even recognize the flaws from decades past?