Japanese Internment Speaker

Hearing Mr. Doi talk about his experiences really gave me a much deeper understanding of what it must have been like to go through this terrible experience. Mr. Doi talked about his life before the war and it did not sound different from any other American citizen and yet his life after was so completely different from the lives of other Americans. He was simply an innocent American citizen however because his parents originally emigrated from Japan, he was treated as the enemy. When he was forced to leave his life behind and move into these terrible camps however he was not angered but confused as to why he was being moved here even though he had never been anything but loyal to America. This side of confusion is not a story that you hear in history books and hearing this from Mr. Doi and helped portray the true feelings of the Japanese during the transition to internment. He was born and raised in America, knew nothing about the Japanese culture, felt no loyalty towards Japan whatsoever and yet he was treated as though he directly helped those who bombed Pearl Harbor. In the camps people were living in fear and even when Mr. Doi and his fellow internee’s were released they still had to live in the fear of racism. Eventually the internees were formally apologized to and paid twenty thousand dollars in reparations. This however would never completely repay the terrible and racist acts committed by Americans. As Mr. Doi explained, many of his friends were forced to abandon their homes and farms during the war, and when they finally returned home they found their neighbors had ransacked their houses.  Mr. Doi actually lived through these horrible events and hearing about his experiences really made this event understandable and real rather than something you just read in a book.