It is always enlightening to hear about historical events from a personal perspective, and I was very grateful to learn about Mr. Doi’s experiences. Hearing about how his childhood was just like any other child’s and how he wasn't very aware of racism because he hadn’t noticed it, reveals how when internment began, the strong racist feelings were new to Japanese Americans like him. Mr. Doi explained how the turning point for the racist feelings came about after the bombing of pearl harbor. At that point, he expressed that the Japanese Americans became the enemy despite the fact that they were American citizens and were the one’s who were bombed. That was impactful because obviously none of those people were involved but they were punished anyways. The attack on Pearl Harbor led to internment where experiences were much different than he was used to. I was very interested to hear about the camp life, which he described as cold and cramped. 3 years in a foreign environment is an awful experience, but they were eventually released. He said that the discrimination changed and that he saw a change in attitude of everyone, in a positive way. That was a start to the reparations though Mr. Doi first thought that it was hopeless. While legislatures began protecting civil rights and groups formed to stand up for the Japanese Americans, there were also reparation payments made. Sensibly, he thought that the payments were not nearly enough to replace everything, but were at least an effort, and better than nothing. After all of the issues, Mr. Doi is comfortable sharing his story and even keeps in touch with fellow internees. I was happy to learn that there are reunions between them and that having that past creates acquaintanceships among those who experienced internment. It was an impactful experience to hear from Mr. Doi, that helped my understanding of Japanese Internment.  

It was truely inspiring and fulfilling to hear Mr. Doi talk about his experiences with Japanese internment. I was inspired by his positive attitude about the entire situation, and his willingness to share all of his experiences with us. I was also shocked by all the we Americans did to the innocent Japanese Americans during World War Two. We forced them into these camps with no proper clause, despite the fact that most of them weren't even from Japan and were born and raised in America for their entire life. I really enjoyed listening to Mr. Doi and am so glad we were able to have the opportunity to have someone with a firsthand experience come and talk to us about Japanese internment.

Having Mr. Doi talk to us about his experienced before, during, and after his time in a concentration camp taught me a lot about what it was like first hand. Finding out that before the order to round up all of the Japanese he had a well-mixed friend group was very interesting. You would think that they would have been more excepting and could have questioned what was happening due to having been exposed to so many different cultures. I knew that once the order had been placed the Japanese cooperated with what they said, but it was different hearing it form someone who went through with it and was genuinely confused as to why it was all happening. There was a different feeling hearing the story compared to reading it from a book or textbook. Once in the camp, Mr. Doi told us that the school there had great teachers and a lot of sports teams to keep them entertained. It was eye opening to see that the school in the camp was very similar to the schools we have today. Going back to a society that didn’t trust you after three years is obviously tough but it was heartwarming to hear that some people’s neighbors took care of the belongings that they had to leave behind. There were the normal emotions of being scared and awkward around everyone but for some it wasn’t as hard as it could have been. Mr. Doi confirmed what we already knew about the $20,000 and how for some it helped with a lot of the debt and for some it was just a penny in the bucket of money they needed to recover from being gone for several years. Overall, hearing Mr. Doi speak was a once in a lifetime experience and I am thrilled that I got to experience it.

We hope you enjoyed Mr. Doi's presentation and we are sure that you have comments and observations that you would like to share with your classmates.  Post a paragraph about what you heard from Mr. Doi today (Friday) (topic sentence, conclusion, plus at least one sentence for each section) to the Japanese Internment Blog.  Then comment thoughtfully  on someone else's post.