Japanese American Exclusion Memorial 2/27

Nidoto Nai Yoni -let it not happen again

Every quarter, my geography professor takes students to the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial to hear Lilly Kodama tell her story about being forcibly removed from her home as a child with the rest of her family, an awful thing to happen to hundreds of thousands of people for truthfully no good reason.

As much as I would love to recount every detail I can remember of her story for you and help connect the dots of life that listening to her story did for me, that isn’t my story to tell. I can only share with you my experience, which is objectively less exciting but hopefully, I can still relay the message.

I can start by saying that just like you would think each time I pay a visit to the Japanese American exclusion memorial I am filled with plenty of negative emotions, anger, guilt, sadness trust me all of that was definitely there, no human with basic empathy could see all of that without feeling that way but in the end, I am left with a strange sense of hope, odd right?

You would think it is the opposite, all things considered.

In 1942, hundreds of thousands of Americans of Japanese descent were forcibly taken from their homes and placed into internment camps by the American government.

This is a fact. This happened within the past 100 years.

Maybe this is just me admitting to my ignorance, but I wasn’t aware this even happened until my first year of college, before then, I had to learn all the names and dates of other atrocities that other countries had committed in World War Two but the cold truth is I had to find out for myself what kind of country America is all on my own, land of the free right?

This left me with a fundamental distrust of the American government. I mean, how could it not? These were people born in America just like me or my family, and if they did it once, they definitely know how to do it again.

Now let’s be real, if something like this did happen again I probably wouldn’t be the target demographic. I am white, and time and time again, America has proven that racism is rampant in the ranks of our country. This information may deeply unsettle me, but I could never begin to understand what it is like to have gone through what Lilly and millions of others have experienced.

Growing up, I was so sold on this whole “perfect picture” of America. That picture was shattered like a mirror as soon as I realized that anyone who proclaims themselves to be the “best in the world” with no definitive proof is generally insufferable and delusional. So why would it be any different for a country?

To put it simply, a country is just a bunch of people being responsible for a bunch of people, and imprisoning thousands of those people unconstitutionally isn’t exactly the behavior of someone who is the best at what they do, just saying.

I can almost hear the rebuttal now, “Oh, but that was wartime, we just did what we had to.”

If countries are just people responsible for other people, then war is just another version of human conflict. Really, no different from my older brother stealing my doll; the difference is if I dropped an atomic bomb on him, I would be a criminal, not some kind of patriot.

I know that may be a juvenile way to look at it, but I feel like we overcomplicate life too often.

Now obviously, that is not why I am filled with a strange hope for humanity; usually, I find it is when Lilly talks that it settles in.

That despite all the awful things that were done to her by the American government, she still comes every quarter to share with its students, about what I am sure is one of the most difficult things she had to experience, but she talks about it so openly and proudly. It is beautiful, and it makes me happy to be a human who has walked this earth.

Now, this memorial isn’t that old, but it has been completely open to the public for 14 years, and in that time it hasn’t been vandalized or disrupted once. I find that fact to be particularly beautiful; it shows how truly important this is to its people.

As Americans, we are taught that soldiers and some old white men are the idealized pillars of our freedom. I am sure they do deserve recognition for that, but when I think about true patriots, I think about Lilly and all of the people who had to fight for their own freedom.

So I’ll leave you with what I took from this,

Be kind, don’t trust everything you read and hear, care about people more than profit, listen to the important stories when they are told.

But most importantly,

Please, let us not let it happen again.