Japanese Internment Memorial

As our class approached the memorial, I expected something compltely different. I thought that we were going to go to an actual museum, or have some guided tour. So my first reaction in my head was "Thats it???". But as our professor continued on about the memorial, I got into it. I also took a couple of pictures to keep as memory, and to give a better visualization.

The Japanese Internment Camp was a forced relocation by the US. government to thousands of Japanese families. This relocation camp happened after Pearl Harbor. The internment camp was forced onto thousands of families because the US. government were trying to protect themselves from this attack to ever happen again. They captured every Japanese family they could and put them into camps, mostly in the West Coast. This was a way to keep American's safe from threats from Japanese/minorities. This included even Japanese who were already legal residents and families that were residing in the U.S.

Ruth Asawa were part of the many families that were interned in these camps. She's known for her famous sculpture we visited the other week. When she was 16, her family was forced to live in horse stalls in Santa Anita. Asawa spent many years creating this memorial found in San Jose. Her memorial has different images of what happened at these camps. Specifically theres an area in her memorial where a family is seen living in horse stalls, and that was her very own family. Asawa did a great amount of research before she even created her memorial. The internment memorial also includes the full story showing families being forced to live in this camp, losing loved ones, guards that protected the camps, and unliving conditions for each story/family.

When I arrived at the view of this memorial, one of my first thoughts was "Why San jose?? Such a random place to put a memorial". Well after a great amount of research, I found the significance of why it was here. During that time after Pearl Harbor, the city of San Jose had and still has an area called Japantown where Japanese lived and had many businesses there. At the time, the government closed every Japanese owned store possible. San jose is a part of the internment history because at the time, some Japanese were were held in San Jose State University's gym.

Looking at this memorial gives me a great appreciation of what it's like today. For Americans, we are very lucky and fortunate to being living in a country of freedom. This memorial has a great story behind it. Some of the stories are shown throughout the memorial. One specific story that captured my attention was the families holding their belongings. On the side of the memorial there's a list of rules and items not to bring. As I noticed this list, I noticed the vignette. Looking at this made me feel sad and I felt bad, that the government was racist at the time and pushed people's freedom.

Living in a great country, I believe nothing like this could ever happen again, especially in America. our country has a great amount of diversity and equality to even think about putting minorities, different genders, or different cultures in internment camps.