Letters to Violet Sell

In my group, Amy’s letters began in 1943 when her mother suffers a stroke and Amy must care for her. Throughout the rest of the letters, Amy continues to update Violet on her mother’s condition. Also, Amy’s engagement with Tomio pans out as Amy describes how he is often away from the camp, teaching Japanese at Ivy League colleges and taking courses himself. In the last letter we read, they finally get married! Amy talks a lot about her sister Martha, as well, and her journey through becoming a nurse in the military.

At one point, Amy mentions the difficulty she has with finding housing outside her Japanese-American community and she becomes frustrated with the “Caucasians” who reject her. Her experience reflects the white prejudice that Takaki describes: “Racist curses repeatedly stung their ears: ‘Jap Go Home,’ ‘Goddamn Jap!’ ‘Yellow Jap!’” (181). While Amy’s description of the situation reflects a less extreme form of antagonism, she still endured the anti-Japanese sentiment present during WWII in addition to the terrible conditions of the internment camp.

This animosity toward Japanese-Americans, especially after they left the internment camps, echoes through Mitsuye Yamada’s “Cincinnati.” The speaker is relieved to have “freedom at last” but is met with a “hissing voice that said/ dirty jap/ warm spittle on my right cheek” (81). Even after Amy suffers through the internment camp, Amy’s husband teaches Japanese to intelligence officers and her sister Martha provides medical assistance to the soldiers, she encounters harsh discrimination.