Personal Narrative: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

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“In the camps. . . . I had the opportunity to study the human race from the cradle to the grave, and to see what happens to people when reduced to one status and one condition. Cameras and photographs were not permitted in the camps, so I recorded everything in sketches, drawings, and paintings.” Mine Okubo (22). From my birth on June 27, 1912 to December 6, 1941 I was just a regular American citizen just like anybody else. However on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I was seen as a terrorist spy, an unloyal american, and an all around untrustworthy person all because of the country my ancestors comes from and my distinct asian features. From then on I would be lose my name and only be known as a number. Just …show more content…

Everybody was going crazy fearing another attack. And of course because I shared the ethnicity with the attackers everybody hated and feared me. People who were nice to me before would yell, spit at me, and call me racial slurs. After that President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a few decrees stating that all citizens of Japanese heritage must register, then evacuate their homes for immediate “relocation”. The government gave me and my little brother Toku 3 days to report. Our family was given a family number 13660. For the next few years we would only be known as 13660. This is what really upset me, we were stripped of our dignity and humanness. Then we (me and my brother) were thrown into a bus and driven to the internment camp known as Tanforan, where we lived in a horse stall for six months. The living conditions were awful, everyone was cramped and dirty. The guards said it not ok for us to have cameras, and other stuff like that. However I took matters into my own hands. I got a pencil and sketch pad, I was determined to show all the american citizens how we were treated in these disgusting, dirty, nasty camps. There was a few times were a mean guard would catch me drawing something just brutal and take the drawing away. After living in a horse stall for six months I was shipped to a camp in the deserts in Utah called Topaz. There I was able to teach art to the little kids there. It was one of the most pleasant experiences during my internment because I got to see these little kids transform from stick figures to real art. I also got to draw the cover for a internee magazine called Trek, three times. One time during my internment I entered an art contest at Berkeley, and I won! A few years

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