Memorial

Thousands of people were stripped of their belongings, taken from their homes, and forced into camps where they were fed little food and made to do hard labor for extensive hours; it was hell on earth given from one country of human beings to another race of human beings. Beginning in 1942, the American government decided to gather all citizens and aliens of the Japanese nationality and move them to camps along the west coast.

As a result of the Japanese bombings at Pearl Harbor in late 1941, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066—a document that prevented people of Japanese decent from going within 50 miles of the west coast, and moved people to internment camps set up mostly in the west. These camps were horrific—little food was available to eat, medical attention was hard to find, and people were given the bare minimum. Psychologically, they were beaten up and forced to live in forsaken cities with little to no material goods. However, the government thought that they were doing the right thing—they rounded up all potential enemy threats and put them together so they could not communicate with outside sources. This, they thought, would prevent another bombing like Pearl Harbor and save countless American lives.

San Jose had a Japantown during the time of the interment camps—however, as expected, the town was empty as the Japanese cleared out to the camps across the nation. SJSU’s own Men’s Gymnasium was a place where people of Japanese decent could come register for the internment camps.

Ruth Asawa was one of the Japanese people who were put into a camp. As a teenager, she was relocated to a camp with her family where they were given virtually nothing and treated poorly. However, because of her experiences she was able to become a renowned artists, creating fountains, sculptures, and other art pieces around the world. Many of her works are on display in various areas of the bay area. One of these pieces is the Japanese American Internment Memorial Sculpture, which was created in 1994 and is made of bronze. This piece is local to San Jose—it can be found on 2^nd Street outside of the Federal Building.

This art piece depicts the hardships that the Japanese people had to go through—from immigration issues years ago to recent times, Asawa shows tough times and emotions. One of the most interesting scenes from this piece of art is about the Japanese in the military. It depicts a family in a tiny house getting the news that their child has been killed—the family members react sadly to the news. This piece is particularly striking—Asawa uses bas-relief and high relief to show depth and dimension in the story. The military man has no emotion as he reads the family a letter, but the three family members sitting in their kitchen are visibly upset—they look sullen and sad, and they don’t look at military man. In the internment camps, it became an option to escape by signing up for military jobs—thus, seeing a scene like this in an internment camp was not entirely bizarre.

Another amazing scene from this work shows a family burning their belongings. It looks like the men are burning all the family has—material objects, documents, etc. the woman behind them is distraught—her hands shield her face as she cannot bear to watch her belongings go up in flames. It was not uncommon to see families do this; it was a familiar occurrence as it was an easy way to get rid of objects that families could not physically carry with them to internment camps. A lot of important family information was lost because of this, but it was necessary, as they did not want anyone else to know their valuable information. This piece truly shows raw emotion, even though one of the characters is hiding her face—however, her hidden face portrays exactly how beside herself she was at the time.

I highly doubt that today’s society would let anything like this happen again today. Although there are issues of people’s freedom’s being taken advantage of now, I don’t think that the public would stand to let their government blatantly take hostage of so many people. America has learned from her mistakes, and nothing to this extent will happen again.