The Other Side of Pearl Harbor

pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/338/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Jeff Adachi/p pI, like many Japanese Americans, await the release of the film "pearl Harbor" with some anxiety and trepidation. Although Hollywood has promised a more sensitive treatment of the infamous bombing of Pearl Harbor, the thought of another Japan vs. America movie threatens to re-open old wounds and ignite already existing anti-Japanese and Asian sentiments, particularly in light of the recent poll reporting that anti-Asian prejudice is at an all-time high./p pI first learned of the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor in my third grade history class. Afterwards, on the school yard, a boy named George called me a "jap" and started a fight with me because "my parents had bombed Pearl Harbor." That evening, I asked my mother if she had anything to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She explained to me that she was third generation American and had as little to do with Pearl Harbor as George's German-American parents had to do with Hitler's reign of terror./p pWhat I didn't realize at that age is that my parents had paid a terrible price for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Within months of December 1941, my mother, father and their families, along with 110,000 other Japanese Americans, were given 48 hours to vacate their homes, close their businesses and churches, get rid of all their possessions and report to the assembly centers. For several months they lived in horse stalls before being shipped off to spend the next four years in barbed wire internment camps in Rohwer, Arkansas and Hila River, Arizona. Even though neither my mother or father had ever even been to Japan, they suffered the wrath of America's anger at Japan./p pThe internment took a great toll upon Japanese American culture. In camp, my grandparents did not teach my parents the Japanese language, customs or religion in fear that they might be accused of being Japanese nationalists. Even with their American citizenship, they were forced to submit loyalty oaths to prove their allegiance to America. For some, proving their loyalty became and obsession. Despite the cries from their distressed families, many young Japanese American men enlisted in the US army, fighting in segregated units which later became the most decorated units in history./p pAfter release from camps, my parents faced poverty and a country full of hostility and racism. Like most Japanese Americans, my grandparents worked to rebuild their lives, working in menial jobs to support the family. It took them years to reach a point where they could live a relatively normal life. And they never were able to fully recover from the social and economic devastation that they experienced in the camps./p pPearl Harbor was a horrible tragedy for the many hundreds of soldiers and innocent people who were killed and maimed. This new film version will expose a new generation of film viewers to this historical fact. However, I hope that somehow people will remember that there was another side to Pearl Harbor, a side that forever changed the destinies of the Japanese American community. It will forever remain a day of infamy for all Americans- including Japanese Americans.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p