The Life of Japanese-Americans - Essay Example

My life is almost over, and I have no more time to move.

            My grandfather, my father’s father, was known as an Issei, one of many Japanese that came to the United States in the late 1800s. He was brought to America by rumors of wages that would line his pockets and burst from them, falling like leaves on the streets that, some said, were made of gold. For weeks he crouched in the bowels of a ship, dreaming of the riches that would be his. He was a hard worker, and worked himself nearly to death building the American Railroads, across the land of the great state of Oregon, with many other Japanese.  He faced discrimination like many other Japanese, from Americans that did not like foreigners that they said invaded their country. He moved to California and opened a small grocery store there, which served the entire local Asian community.  

            People always liked my father, Samuel Aikido. He was an American, the first generation of his family to be so. From the time he could walk he worked in my grandfather’s store. When he came of age, the store became his, and he married a woman who, like him, had been born in America.

            I was born in 1931, two years after the stock market crashed, though I did not know that at the time. I was quickly followed by two sisters in two years, and a brother soon after them.         

My grandparents both died in 1940, one year before the dreadful bombing of Pearl Harbor. My mother’s face was white and stricken, while my father was as angry as the Americans about the incident. The community, outside of those who were Japanese as well, had never seemed to like us much. Now, my parents feared, it would become worse.

Father could not explain to us why he had to close his grocery store, or why soldiers came to our home to take us away. I do not know if he even knew what Executive Order 9066 was, the one that sent us away to the War Relocation Camps. My mother protested that it was not right; we were all Americans. We all had the paperwork to prove it. My father claimed that if we cooperated, soon they would see that there was nothing to fear. I was glad to go, and yet not glad to go; my entire school had been acting as though I personally had dropped the bombs that destroyed Pearl Harbor.

It is still hard for me to speak of those years in the camp. I knew we were in Idaho, but I do not remember exactly where. I remember being cold almost all of the time. We lived in a barracks room with only two cots and a pot-bellied stove. We took turns sleeping on the cots and the floor. It was cold no matter what we did. There was food, but never enough to feel full.

Father tried hard not to get sick, but it was no use. The camp was unsanitary, with much filth and very little hope, and soon a cold became something worse. He died in the camp. It was lucky that I was only fourteen when the camps released us; otherwise, I fear that I would have had to become a soldier. I would have been proud to fight for the Americans and this great country, but I doubt it would have helped us to convince people that not all Japanese were like those at Pearl Harbor.

My mother packed us up and took us home, only to find out that when we got back, other people were living in our home. My father’s store was boarded up, and no amount of asking at City Hall could tell us if we even still owned the building. She found us an apartment and made her living sewing clothes in a factory for long hours. All of my parents’ savings were gone; the government had taken it.

My mother died a broken-hearted woman soon after we were released from the camp. It became my job to support my siblings. Like many others, I have moved on from the experiences, but they still linger in my heart. I married and raised a family of my own, thankful that they did not have to endure what I did. I do not have any pictures to show them, and they do not ask. I received, just as any other survivor of the camps did, a check for $20,000 when the government finally admitted that they were wrong to do what they did. It does not matter now. I have left most of it to my children, using only what was necessary to buy gifts for the family at Christmas and to have a cigar once in a while.

It is now time for me to eat dinner and go to bed. I may look back on these words again later, but it is enough that they have been written. Hopefully, now, it can be understood that we suffered, though no one, not even us, will ever know why. I pray tonight I will be able to sleep without reliving the years in that camp.