Letters

Today's Experience of getting to examine Amy's letters was very intriguing and greatly reflected much of what many Japanese in the U.S. had to go through. It was really moving to here Amy talk about all the hardships and realities of what we have spent most of our time in this class studying through our books and Literature. Even the miscellaneous small-talk had meaning and could be related back to the events of that time. I personally felt that I gained much greater insight of some of the effects and day-to-day struggles that were going on for the Japanese after the first attack on pearl harbor by reading through Amy's stories and comments. When I imagine her confusion and distress as she, and many others, were forced to leave their homes and live in internment camps, I wonder how I would have felt if I were in their shoes. I can almost perfectly make out some of the emotions expressed from reading the words in her letters, and it helps paint a picture of how inappropriate and wrong implementing the camps actually were. Although sad, I think it is so cool that the letters were saved over the years and the fact that they are 70 years old really brings out their authenticity.

Many of the letters were hard to read, however one in particular that stood out to me was Amy's letter to Violet Sell in 1942 describing what one of the Internment Camps she was stationed in looked like. In her letter, she briefly mentions to Violet that the camp had "White walls with red rooftops" being very different from the other camps with the standardized Lilac Black color for walls. Thinking about this, I was able to predict just how bland and identical the camps must have been for her to point out a difference in the paint of one of the relocation centers. Also included in the same letter, Amy addresses the wage differences for unskilled and skilled laborers and goes on to talk about her qualification as a potential skilled worker and how she could possibly register for one of the higher paid jobs within the interment camp. Takaki also mentions a wage difference on page 396, stating that "Government employees in camps earned twelve dollars a month as unskilled laborers, sixteen dollars as skilled, and nineteen dollars a professionals". Many adults resorted to working as wage earners for the government as it was their only way of earning money to purchase new clothing or household items available to them through company catalogs, like "Sears".

In Bold Words, I feel the poem "Thirty years Under" on pg. 80 greatly compares to how Amy was feeling towards the treatment of White people even after the internment Camps were dismantled. Throughout all of her letters, their was no recognizable signs of racism by Amy towards White Americans. However, in one circumstance she describes very shortly the pain and racial discrimination shown by "Those Caucasians" after many Japanese Americans returned to their jobs from the relocation camps. Referring to the verbal abuse and judgement by White Americans, Amy expresses what seems like brief anger and embarrassment just like Yamada had in his poem when he says "there is nothing more humiliating than being spat on like a dog". When Japanese Americans returned to their homes after being interrogated, many were not allowed to go back to their jobs, or if they were many of them were not treated friendly. What was meant to be a temporary confinement, ended up having negative long-lasting effects on many Japanese lives in America.