Letters

It was interesting to read the letters Martha wrote to Violet Sell. She talked about the internment camps, such as the conditions and how the camps were very disorganized and were only half built and ready when they were there. Takaki also mentions the building of the internment camps, and says that many Japanese-Americans had to stay at assembly centers while the internment camps were still being built. This shows that the internment of Japanese-Americans was very rushed, especially since the camps were not even completely built. Martha also talked about the great amount of Buddhists. She was very involved with Sunday School and thought that it would have been nice if there were more Christians in the camp. Martha was also passionate and pursuing her dreams of becoming educated. She wanted to become a nurse’s aid, so she practiced in the medical wards and applied to many schools.

Martha also talked about the military drafting in the camps. As Takaki says, in this military draft, the Nisei boys were asked two loyalty questions of whether or not they were willing to fight in the U.S. military and whether or not they were willing to pledge their allegiance to the United States. If they answered yes, they were drafted. If they answered no, the results were not any better. As mentioned in “No-No Boy,” Okada discusses the difficulty for Nisei boys to decide whether or not they should answer yes-yes or no-no. Answering no would practically ruin their future, but it was also very difficult to answer yes because many still had strong cultural nationalism and were loyal to Japan.