Letters

Having the opportunity to read the letters written by Amy addressed to Violet was a really cool experience because, as someone who is nearly 100% white, I don't really have any idea of what it would have been like to have family affected by the internment of Japanese Americans, let alone being one of the Japanese Americans that was interned. Despite the circumstances of these letters, being able to read and analyze a firsthand source about such a significant historical happenstance is incredibly enlightening and just exciting to think about. My group had a set of 6 letters ranging from September of 1943 to May of 1944. In the letters, a lot of things are revealed about Amy's life during the war. First of all, it is a trying time for Amy, as one would expect. Despite removing herself from her church duties, Amy explains to Violet that a reason for her lack of consistency in writing back lies in her not having much time for anything. Also, in addition to the camps, there are a lot of trying circumstances surrounding Amy and her family, one example being her mother having a stroke and the caretaking and recovery falling primarily on Amy's shoulders. In her letters, even though at the time, I don't believe the family was currently interned, Amy still references the camps very frequently, most notably when describing the scene of her wedding: As she looked back at the faces celebrating her marriage to Tomio, only two were of people that she had known before the camps.

These letters, as expected, have a great connection to a lot of the stuff that we read out of Takaki in previous nights. Most notably for me, Amy mentions her brother John receiving notification that he would be given his physical examination for enlistment in the Army. Also, the majority of our bundle of letters discussed Amy's engagement (and eventually marriage) to Tomio. What was interesting about this to me was that in the 4th letter, Amy invites Violet to take a few days trip to see her wedding that she was anticipating would take place in June. By the 5th letter, Amy is apologizing and saying that they would not be wed in June because Tomio could not come to Amy because of laws inhibiting the activity of Japanese Americans that were in place at the time, since it was still a time of war with Japan. Fortunately, the letters had a happy ending, as Amy's final letter is a celebration of her marriage to Tomio and she describes the scene of her wedding. One literary work that these letters could be compared to, in my opinion, is Cincinnati by Mitsuye Yamada. The closing lines of this poem, "My tears would not wash it...Everyone knew me," describes that, despite the nationalism that the Japanese Americans felt for the United States, they knew that they wouldn't be accepted by what Amy describes in her letters as "the Americans." Amy refers to White Americans as "the Americans" seemingly because she knows that she is not an American based on the standards of other Americans. In kind of a contrast to the poem, she knows that everyone knows her as not an American.