It was very interesting to listen to an 80 year old Japanese American from WW2 still alive and doing well after living through such a horrible personal experience. Before being interned Mr. Doi's life was much like ours. He went to school in the 8th grade and had a lot of different ethnic friends. He and his family were sad about Pearl Harbor and he felt like he was treated differently for being of Japanese dissent even though he was American. I really found interesting listening to what Mr. Doi did while he spent time in the camp. He talked about what was like and it seemed like it was very harsh. I can't believe that he had to give up all his belongings (except what they could take in their arms and suitcases) and all his freedom. I didn't seem like we treated Japanese as American citizens by doing this to them. The most interesting thing he talked about were the living conditions for the families. The army barracks and one small room that could only fit five people seemed bad because they were horrible conditions to sleep or live in. He spent three years there and had to go to high school in the camp. It was okay because he was still educated but not like it would have been for the rest of high school life outside the camp. It was also really interesting to learn about how neighbors treated his family. There were the nice neighbors that took care of their stuff and stopped people from looting and then there were the neighbors that didn't make good on the promise to help and instead stole from them. I couldn't imagine having to leave my home with my family and leave all our belongings that we use everyday behind us. Living in one room together would be awful and having to follow all the orders of the camp officers even more. And all this just because of our ethnicity, it would be horrible. It was great that Mr. Doi spent time with us because mistakes like this can never happen again in our county and the only way to make sure is if we all understand what it was like and what we did.
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