Displacement and Recovery

Shame is the first word that comes to mind when I go to the Japanese American National Museum. Though Japanese Internment is often overshadowed by many of the other human etrocities throughout the 20th century, the impact that it has had on people's lives should never be overlooked namely because it seems as though that the stories that we heard are being written right now. Our docent (who is a nisei) did a great job of telling his story and he did so in a way that made you really feel the humanity of the circumstances. He was only 6/7 when his family arrived to the camp and left internment when he was 7/8 - unable to really talk about the situation until he was a lot older and only interested in finding a place to play day after day in the camp. He shared with us stories about how he would jump off the snowy roofs into piles of coal when he brought us to the model cabin as well as how he would spend the better majority of secondary school avoiding any Japanese people as a result of the experience. It's traumatizing and it seems as though it's almost human nature to regret or avenge or repair rather than prevent or prepare or protect. I won't dabble too much into that and I know that we aren't meant to design lessons on American history - but there is a really strong tie to current events that I think a lot of students would find some interest talking about.

A side point is definitely how important these stories are going to be in the future - as the aging population of the holocaust and japanese internment and the armenian genocide and World War 2 (among a great other events in history) begins to dwindle. There's a lot of technology being developed to machine learn and immortalize their stories in film - but I see some responbility that we have as teachers to also be part of passing those stories along.