It was a privilege to have Mr. Doi take the time out of his day and speak to us about his life, not just in the internment camps, but his life both post and pre-internment, and also, a byproduct was a few life lessons learned. Not everyone gets to listen to such a story. It was like listening to the Holocaust speaker that came in to talk to the Stanley eighth graders last year. It was powerful and motivational. As a child, Mr. Doi was fortunate enough to live in a town where he was not exposed to the harsh racism and segregation that existed in other areas towards minorities, take the South as an example. Yet, nature took its course and the different races began to separate and the color line became more and more defined, where before, it had been blurred by perhaps some sort of innocence and youth. Pearl Harbor was the event that just clarified that line to the max. It was and still is some sort of a dream to be able to erase that line and set our differences in skin, religion, or culture aside. The line is drawn in permanent ink: it will only slowly and gradually go away. The only way to speed up the process of erasing the line is by finding that unique solution. In my opinion, that very solution is the help of people like Mr. Doi to try to make us see what happens when the line becomes too defined. However, as Mr. Doi said, there are unfortunately less and less people like him every year. Thus, it is our job to say, "Never Forget" to Japanese Internment, not just the Holocaust.

The way Mr. Doi chronicled his story was rather interesting to me. I expected much more time going into detail about his time in Heart Mountain, but I now realize that this was to further emphasize the point that people were taken out of existence for three years and placed back into society with a sour wish of good luck from the government. Internment might have been over, but racism was still alive and well. It was hard to get a job or even some place to stay. People they had trusted turned into thieves and had their houses and property burned and destroyed. And then, there was the $20,000. Mr. Doi was indifferent on the matter, but I honestly don't think any amount of money is equivalent to time. All the struggle up to that point, all the toil to get where they wanted, and only to have it all taken away. $20,000 just isn't enough. Even so, it's better than nothing.