Letters

Our letters (from group 1) began April 18^th 1942, and covered Amy’s journey to the assembly camp. She also was talking to Violet about how her papa was having his hearing soon, and they were attempting to find a reference for him. They were trying to get a Presbyterian reverend to vouch for papa. In another letter in May, they arrived at the Tulare assembly center. She described the poor conditions of the assembly center. Then on June 12^th she wrote a letter saying they had been deported to Gila River camp in Arizona, and it was scorching hot. She also said many people got sick in the camp, and that police were patrolling around the camp so she could not hike.

One part of her story that related to Takaki was a Japanese American’s description of the assembly camps, which were “filthy, smelly and dirty” (394). Amy had made a similar observation in her letter to Violet. The Tulare assembly center had been an agricultural fair before being converted to a camp. Old stalls for livestock were converted to barracks, similar to the situation in Takaki that said, “Where a horse or cow had been kept, a Japanese American family was moved in” (394). This was extremely degrading for the Japanese Americans, and even though this part was not mentioned in the letters, it was no doubt extremely hard to deal with the fact that these Americans were treated so similarly to animals.

In the letters, I also noticed that Amy did not complain about her situation very much. I would expect anyone at that assembly camp to write mostly about the horrible conditions, because they would be so hard to deal with. Amy did not do this, and I think it shows the strength of the Japanese Americans to make it through this horrible event. In Takaki it says the Japanese Americans created “rock gardens with bonsai outside their drab barracks” (395). This also shows the strength they showed, to make the camp a little more bearable. The Japanese Americans did not just accept their fate, they continued to be strong in the face of extreme racism.