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5 February , 2002
INTERNMENT
AND LOST YOUTH
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed the military to exclude anyone from any area deemed a security area. The order was followed by the forced incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese heritage -- including entire families -- in 10 godforsaken locations in the country's interior, away from the West Coast. This internment has been a central fact of most Japanese Americans' family history for half a century.
| Former internees report lifelong struggles with chronic depression, psychosomatic illnesses, low self-esteem and the stresses of over-achieving. |
It's getting harder and harder to keep those years buried, though. The generation that was rounded up as adults in the camps is now elderly, and is passing on. At the same time, their grandchildren are in high school and although the internment is still barely covered in history texts, the family's history is becoming a popular topic for school projects. Oral histories which before were recorded and collected by scholars and historians using grant monies, are more and more being captured on video by teens who love their grandmothers and grandfathers and are curious about the event that affected their lives decades ago.
Plus, although internment is still not very visible in mainstream US pop culture (a couple of books/movies such as "Snow Falling on Cedars") or in the classrooms, there are increasingly more documentaries and educational resources available. Films such as Emiko Omori's excellent "Rabbit in the Moon" (which has also been shown at film festivals) and Satsuki Ina's "Children of the Camps" have been making the rounds for the past two years on PBS and other educational broadcasting outlets.
Unfortunately, such programs aren't aired during primetime on most stations, and Denver's PBS outlets are no exception. I finally got the chance to see "Children of the Camps" myself on a video, and I was moved to tears by the documentary.
The film begins by explaining the history of the internment camps, and then chronicles a weekend workshop with Ina, a therapist and professor at the University of California a Sacramento, and six people who were either children when their families were incarcerated, or were born in a camp during the war. During the course of the weekend, the men and women each express how internment affected them or molded their family's dynamics in the years since.
The participants all had different backgrounds and experiences. One had a father who was arrested as a Japanese sympathizer and separated from his family for two years. One was sent from camp back to Japan with her family as part of an exchange for American prisoners, and suffered taunting in a country where she didn't fit. One spent a lifetime trying to please a distant father. One admitted his rage at internment was bound up with his anger at being physically abused by his stepfather.
The group met in an idyllic retreat by the northern California shore, and assembled in a small circle in comfortable chairs to discuss their personal histories. The most powerful discussion focused on a notorious questionnaire handed out by the government in camp, which included two critical questions that asked if internees would be willing to fight in the US military, and if they would renounce any allegiance to Japan.
One workshop participant felt sympathy for the adult internees who answered "yes" and "yes" and the men who subsequently volunteered for service in what would become the 442, the most decorated American combat group in history. But another expressed nothing but scorn for anyone who thought it was their patriotic duty to accept what the government was doing to Japanese Americans. These two men passionately presented their opinions, and worked through their differences with Ina's guidance so that all the participants felt a long-festering wound had been healed.
Ina was herself interned as a child - she was born in camp - and in the early 1990s she began working with other children of the camps and developed these workshops. She found that many had lifelong scars from the experience that they had never acknowledged.
"Former internees report lifelong struggles with chronic depression, psychosomatic illnesses, low self-esteem and the stresses of over-achieving," Ina explains in the comprehensive companion Web site to the film. "Consonant with Japanese American values, these individuals have internalized their suffering in an effort to secure their acceptance in their own country."
There are people, including Japanese Americans (and Japanese Canadians who were also interned in Canada during the war) who disagree about the negative focus of all the discourse on internment, and think internment was fair and that the community should move on. Ina understands this point of view exists, but suggests that part of the different perspective could come from the age when people were interned. "This is of course, quite a complex issue. Many of the Nisei were teens whose main focus was to become independent and the camps afforded them the opportunity to socialize with all JA peer groups and also to separate themselves from their parents." She says this age group may have been the most resilient, while young parents, small children and the elderly may have experienced more anxiety and fear and were more traumatized.
Ina says that after facilitating the workshops for over a decade, the weekend filmed in "Children of the Camps" follows a consistent pattern: "Most people find that their defenses against feeling the trauma are freed up when there is safety and commonality. Every single one of the 20+ workshops I conducted followed the same emotional sequence. First telling their stories, some very tragic, while appearing detached or even smiling (seen in "Children of the Camps" as well) and then being moved by other people's stories and finally feeling their own sense of loss and mourning and humiliation visited upon them and their parents.
"The group sessions I did prior to making the film were ones that were made up of Nikkei who had some gnawing sense that the internment had affected them, but they weren't sure exactly why. The pressure and deep desire to belong was so intense for most families that the only way to survive was to minimize and forget, but of course, from my perspective, true healing only happens when the painful experiences are shared with compassionate witnesses."
She also conducts non-clinical workshops where she shows the film and then moderates an intergenerational dialogue. In these more casual sessions, she says, there is usually someone who insists that internment shouldn't be made into such a big deal.
But internment WAS a big deal, both for our community and for our country. It's hard for me to ignore the camp experience, even though my own family wasn't impacted by it. Many of the people that lived through the camps are still with us, and their memories are filled with the experience, whether they acknowledge it or not.
Erin's parents, Marian and Rex, were both interned as young children, at Rowher, the camp in Arkansas. They both watched "Children of the Camps" and were surprised at how little they knew and remembered about internment - their parents had not spoken much about those years, even though they grew up under the shadow of the experience, long after the war was over. And we have to wonder how these shadows still play upon the children of the children of camps.
It's time we let the light shine into these shadows and free the generations from the darkness.
NOTE: Personal copies can be purchased for $40. Checks can be made out to Asian Pacific Community Counseling/Children of the Camps Project, 2716 X Street, Sacramento, CA 95818. All the royalties go towards additional workshops and Ina's next documentary, "From A Silk Cocoon." For more information about the film, visit the Web site at http://www.children-of-the-camps.org