M4, U1, L1 8th

I can infer the topic of this module from text and visual resources.

By Elizabeth Hough

​M4, U1, L1 - 8th

Open Ended

When we first considered writing a book about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two, we told a New York writer friend about the idea. He said, “It’s a dead issue. These days you can hardly get people to read about a live issue. People are issued out.”

“I know it,” my husband said. “I’m issued out myself. The issue isn’t what we want to write about. Everybody knows an injustice was done. How many know what actually went on inside? If they think anything, they think concentration camps. But that conjures up Poland and Siberia. And these camps weren’t like that at all.” (ix)

What does the suffix -ment tell us about the word internment? To help you, think of other words that have the suffix -ment (e.g., entertainment, embarrassment, advertisement), and consider the relationships between the suffixes and the roots of these words.

Open Ended

Resource 1

“Executive Order 9066 had been signed by President Roosevelt, giving the War

Department authority to define military areas in the western states and to

exclude from them anyone who might threaten the war effort.” (14)

What do you think this means in relation to what we read about the Holocaust and WWII?

Open Ended

Resource 2

“We drove past a barbed-wire fence, through a gate, and into an open space

where trunks and sacks and packages had been dumped from the baggage trucks

that drove out ahead of us. I could see a few tents set up, the first rows of black

barracks, and beyond them, blurred by sand, rows of barracks that seemed to

spread for miles across this plain. People were sitting on cartons or milling

around, with their backs to the wind, waiting to see which friends or relatives

might be on this bus. As we approached, they turned or stood up, and some

moved toward us expectantly. But inside the bus no one stirred. No one waved or

spoke. They just stared out the windows, ominously silent.”

This takes place in the United States. Who might be going to this place?

Open Ended

“It is sobering to recall that though the Japanese relocation program, carried

through at such incalculable cost in misery and tragedy, was justified on the

ground that the Japanese were potentially disloyal, the record does not disclose a

single case of Japanese disloyalty or sabotage during the whole war . . .

—Henry Steele Commager, Harper’s Magazine, 1947”

Source: Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar. Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

Americans were taken to internment camps. They were Japanese American, but still, born in America. Why do you think they were taken?

Open Ended

Look at this picture.

Write your thoughts.

Open Ended

Resource 7

“The simplest and clearest lesson from the exclusion and internment is that it is

wrong to view entire populations as monoliths and attribute to all members of a

group—be they Japanese or Muslims or Mexicans or Iranians or even

Americans—the characteristics of a few. This is at the heart of what it means to

not be prejudiced.”

What is prejudice according to this person?

Open Ended

• What were the causes and impacts of Japanese American internment camps?

• What are the main lessons that can be learned from Japanese American internment?

• How can people effectively apply the lessons of internment to their own communities?