Before Internment
During 1940-1942, World War II raged in Europe and eventually dragged American troops into the fray. However, life in America for Japanese Americans continued as normally as it did for other Americans. Japanese American children still went about life caught up in their petty concerns. As seen in the top picture on the top right, the child not being held by her grandmother appears sad and a little resentful that she is no longer the baby of the family, that she will no longer be held up in the air and doted on. In the second picture,, a line of toddlers sit in front of their home, the picture-perfect American dream house, complete with mom in a sundress and a well-kept garden. The children show an adorable range of surprise, contentment, boredom, happiness, and mischief. They sit on their lawn, fully occupied by the picture being taken and their mother looking on admiringly. This picture encapsulates everything that America stood for, the perfect American family with the perfect house and the perfect outfits taking the perfect candid photograph. This theme continues in the third picture, as another family enjoys a scenic picnic outside. The adults of the family exchange pleasantries with their children on their laps, the father dozing on a blanket. Six children of varying ages display emotions from happiness to hunger, one even scowling as she seems to pick her nose. They all revel in their family experience, but also take it for granted because they cannot imagine living any other way. They are all American-born, living the American dream, enjoying a day as American as apple pie on their checkered picnic blankets outside their suburban Washington home. In the last pre-internment photograph, the fourth one, two young Japanese American boys play dress-up in their yard. They both grin as they sport ill-fitting clothes that appear to be cowboy costumes. Cowboys, a fully American tradition and custom, fit these boys perfectly, with their childish wonder and mischief-filled smiles. They cannot fathom being anything other than American and it does not matter that there were never any Japanese American cowboys or that their clothes do not fit them; they are cowboys.
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