Letters

In one of Amy’s letters to Violet, she was scared to hear that an internee in the camp committed suicide and she didn’t know why. We might not know the reason why this internee suicided but we know for sure that all Japanese Americans during WWII felt hopeless. They had done everything to show their loyalty to their adopted country but the “Americans” won’t listen to them. In Bold Words, a No-No boy tells the judge that “I want to go in your army because this is my country … what it means to me to be an American” (Okada 168), which also represented the feeling of Japanese in America during WWII. They were drafted, made new weapons and volunteered in the army during WWII to fight with their country against Japan, but these actions weren’t enough to prove their loyalty to America. No matter how hard they try to prove their loyalty to America the governments still think that they’re dangerous to America.

Amy is very positive person, during the camp the conditions were horrible as described in Takaki “the internees were assigned to barracks and each… for the bed” (395) and Amy had to make her own furniture but she was fine with everything. To some Japanese Americans the experiences in the camp were tragic “some were never able to return home: too old, too ill, or too brokenhearted” (Takaki 405), but these didn’t apply to Amy because she is cheerful girl. After the camp she married to Toniol and planned to move to Minneapolis for a new start.