On February 19th, 1942, then-president of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt forced many people who lived on the Pacific Coast to relocate to a concentration camp in the West. Because of this, thousands of American citizens lost their jobs and had to leave behind valuables that could not be taken with them to the camps. The conditions of the camps were not ideal, or even adequate. The incarcerated people were Japanese-Americans, who were being discriminated against because of the previous events that occurred on December 7th that previous year, when the Japanese army attacked the American base located at Pearl Harbor, an Hawaiian territory. Because of this, the Japanese who lived in America were subtly and bluntly discriminated against. …show more content…
Her parents recognize that they will be discriminated against. They lived in Ocean Park, and were the “the only Japanese family in the neighborhood.”(Page 17). Her father was more or less ‘hiding them in plain sight’. Because they were the only Japanese in the neighborhood, he thought that they would appear more white to others, and then they would not be discriminated against. When Jeanne’s father was with her and her family, he had to erase any evidence that suggested that he was still afflicted with Japan, who had recently bombed Pearl Harbor. Page 6 says, “That night Papa burned the flag he had brought with him from Hiroshima thirty-five years earlier. It was such a beautiful piece of material, I couldn’t believe he was doing that. He burned a lot of papers too, documents, anything that might suggest he still had some connection to Japan.” Nonetheless, it did not work, as her father was taken away to be interrogated. It is implied that he knew the event was coming. Because Jeanne’s mother felt so unsafe in their neighborhood, she moves her family to Terminal Island. On page 10 the author writes, “Mama's first concern now was to keep the family together, and once the war began, she felt safer there (referencing Terminal Island) than isolated racially in Ocean Park.” After the Pearl Harbor attack, people were suspicious of Japanese-Americans, and several of them were being taken away to be interrogated, including Jeanne’s father, the reason her mother uproots the family and takes them to Terminal Island so they will not have to experience racism and discrimination that comes with living in a predominantly white city. However, her mother’s decision is almost ironic, because Terminal Island had a large Japanese population and therefore it was one of the first places that was cleared through to go to concentration camp. Jeanne’s mother was just