Monday, April 23, 2012

Terkel #6

Peter Ota, Nisei lives in Los Angeles and his father is a leader of the Japanese chamber of commerce. Unfortunately, while they were living fine in the United States they were forced to evacuate their area and were shipped to Santa Anita where their future was uncertain. They were forced to lie in these small barracks that were not very nice and did not allow for privacy. This had really change the thoughts of Peter and his family, especially his father as Peter explained his father, "Had put all his faith in this country."(207) After they were sent to these internment camps Peter's father had lost some of his faith that he previously had for America. These camps can relate to what was going on during the Holocaust because when Hitler was in power he was forcing the Jews out of their areas and made them go into these concentration camps. These camps are similar because both minorities were forced to leave their homes and go to these horrible camps with bad conditions.Though Peter and his family were stuck on these camps, there was one way to leave them. Peter decided to take this route in which he would work on sugar beet farms.  Though the pay was very low and the conditions were not great, Peter felt it was a better alternative than staying in the camps. When he was old enough, Peter was drafted into the army. This was a little ironic because when he was fighting in the war, his family was at the camp waiting for the war to end. Peter suffered a tragedy when he was entering the army as his mother passed away. After his service was finished Peter wanted to be able to blend into the community and become a part of "white America". Later in life when Peter was married and had a daughter, his daughter questioned him about these internment camps and it was very difficult for him and others to talk about the terrible experiences they had with them. This can relate to my grandfather because even though he served in the Army he did not really want to talk about it ever because of some of the bad memories that were involved with it.

Betty Basye Hutchinson was a nurse that helped many young men in the war. At first it was hard for her because they made the nurses pay for rent for the places that they were staying in when serving as nurses even though Betty did not have any money to pay for it. Luckily for her the government helped these nurses and paid for their homes. She became a very popular nurse as many people would take pictures of her and she was even given a nickname as the "twirl girl". Many of the nurses dropped out of this job in order to join the army. She got the accomadation of being an official nurse when she said, "The day President Roosevelt died I was an official Army nurse"(213). Though Betty really liked working as a nurse it was very hard as she had to go through seeing some very disgusting images. She was working in the orthapedic field were some of the soldiers were severly wounded and had many body parts that were distorted. One of the soldiers that she worked on was Bill and he claimed he would not leave the room until his face was put back to normal. Betty knew that it was not going to be possible to fix these battle wounds, but she did her best work to replace his face. After the war Betty was with Bill and it was very hard to go out in public as the wounds of Bill's face were still very visible. Others would give them bad looks and feel disgusted when around them, but they knew that they would have to go through some of this disrespect from others by the looks they got from others. This can relate to my life because my grandmother suffered a fire which has left burned parts all over her body. When I am with her some people may look at her differently, but by now our family has become suceptible to this and know that others may look at her in this way. Anyways Betty was still disappointed because she didn't understand why these soldiers were fighthing because there was always going to be some conlfict before, during, and after the war is fought. This can relate to the past and present because though many wars were fought, many problems have still not been solved. We still have many soldiers all over the world today because there seems like there will always be conflicts with other countries.    

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