Drawing parallels between the 1940s and the post-9/11 world, three women whose families were directly affected by Japanese internment camps during World War II ran a panel discussion hosted by the Dartmouth Japan Society. The event, held on Monday night, marked the 65th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt's issuance of Executive Order 9066, which called for the internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans.
Nora Yasumura, an advisor to Asian and Asian American students, said her father was interned at the age of seven. She linked the climate in the country leading up to the formation of Japanese internment camps to present-day fears of terrorism.
"It makes me think today of racial profiling," Yasumura said.
During World War II, many people felt that isolating Japanese Americans might diminish the threat to domestic security, Yasumura said.
"I think it just made people feel this mirage that they were safer," she said after the discussion.
Though the internment camps were closed decades ago, the lessons learned from that era in American history are still relevant, Yasumura said, as racial prejudice still exists.
"It's very dangerous and it's a slippery slope when we start to be comfortable sacrificing people because they are easily identifiable," Yasumura said.
Dorothy Yamashita, whose husband was a senior in high school when his family was put in an internment camp, offered a similar warning.
"Be careful what's done in the name of homeland security," she said.
Dana Yamashita, assistant to the vice president of public affairs, joined her mother Dorothy in describing her father's experiences in an internment camp. Both women mentioned that despite the humiliation he experienced in the camps, he later served in the American army for several years.
All three women said that living conditions for their relatives often worsened after leaving the internment camps. Upon departing the camps, Japanese-Americans faced discrimination and had difficulty finding employment.
"My husband's folks became domestic servants," Dorothy said. "Beforehand they owned a tuna company, but the boat was destroyed during the war and none of these Japanese fishermen could go back to fishing."
During the discussion, one student spoke about the discrimination that her grandparents of German descent faced living in America. They abandoned many aspects of their heritage and stopped speaking German to avoid ostracism from their community. Still, as Caucasians, they were able to avoid much of the discrimination that Japanese-Americans faced.
The women emphasized the importance of remembering their relatives' experiences, so as to prevent any recurrence of similar situations. The onus, Yasumura said, is on the younger generation to learn about and remember these experiences.
"My dad didn't really talk about the internment camps because there was so much trauma, but I think our generation can," Yasumura said. "It's our responsibility to check in with our own stereotypes and biases. It's mine and everybody's role to help to share these stories."
