After Internment
Immediately after internment ends, the children regain their emotions. The top picture depicts two young Japanese American girls, holding hands and beaming beside a car. Suddenly, they identify with one another again, happy just to be in each other’s presence. They do not stand stoically side by side, but physically connect to one another. These are people, children who can carelessly smile and pose beside a car. The car also indicates a freedom that they had not known for upwards of two years. They can go anywhere, farther than they probably remember going. In the second picture, we see another vehicle, this time a truck. A group of six children stand on the side bumper, interacting in much the same way as they did before internment. They are laughing and embracing, some happy, some sad, all involved. They all engage with the camera and with each other, standing on their way out of internment. Emily Roxworthy writes about this apparent "stoic rebounding" that led to the labeling of Japanese Americans as the model minority (Roxworthy, 1). She explains that many people saw this easy return to normal life as assurance that internment camps were not that bad, that they were just as the propaganda of the time made them seem (Roxworthy, 1). This assumption logically follows for Japanese American Adults, as an outsider would expect more of an uproar at unjust treatment. However, this oversimplifies the situation; if Japanese Americans were to complain about the internment camps, that complaint might be seen as unAmerican and they might, at least in their heads, risk being sent back to a disloyalty camp. For the children, the lack of complaining likely had more to do with the inherent optimism characteristic of children. Once outside camp walls, their culture regains the social concept of childhood that Wyness and Postman explain as unnecessary (Wyness, 8). Children can once again adopt the childlike wonder and innocence that they were stripped of in the camp culture. They smile because they are no longer expected to function as smaller adults. |
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