War Without Mercy

War without mercy is a perfect title for this piece. Throughout the history of the United States there has been some sort of racial tension. For the most part we think of African Americans as receiving the brunt of this tension. But during the WWII era we see it is the Japanese-Americans that received the criticism. For the most part their only crime was the color of their skin and the slant of their eyes. They were rounded up and moved out of mainstream society because they were a "threat" to national security. I know that this time was stressful and there was question as to whom to trust but could we really not trust the shop keepers in San Francisco that sold fish to the neigherborhood. Did we really have to seize their assets and possessions. The internment of people in the United States is a topic that is not always discussed because we were fighting a war on another front in which a man was doing the same thing to a group of people because of the religion. Were we really that much better than Hitler?
After looking at the images from NARA I realized how primitive their living conditions were. I did not realize that the inhabitants were made to do hard labor. For many of them this was something new. The education of the young people was inadequate and so was the treatment. After reading some of the book I understand how fear can grip a nation. It happened to us after 9/11 and we had a new target for racial profiling, the Middle Eastern Terrorist. Our country has come just short of rounding up all of the Arabic citizens and exiling them. I do understand that we need to protect ourselves but I just think we could come up with a better plan.
I will definitely use the photographs I looked at the put them into a photo anyalsis sheet. I have done several of them this year and the kids really respond to it. Also, I will use the relocation center map that was on one of the sites.