Literary Analysis: To the Lady by Mitsuye Yamada

One unknown woman, while writing an editorial to a San Francisco newspaper questioned "Why the Japanese-Americans let the government put them into those camps without protest" (line 2-4)? It is true that most did go quietly and without fuss, "but we didn't draw the line" (line 30). On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which allowed the military to remove anyone from "military areas" to protect against espionage and/or sabotage against the United States (Children). What the order actually granted was justification for rounding up thousands of American citizens and relocating them to virtual prison camps. In her poem, "To the Lady", Mitsuye Yamada addresses the question "How did this happen?" and the realty "You let em' -I let'm" (line 33-34) of post-Pearl Harbor America. It was my love of history and my fascination with the Japanese culture that drew me to the poem. What I found just beyond it broke my heart. It was a time when Americans "marched on Washington" (line 26) and "wrote letters to Congress" (line 29) in outrage over the treatment of the Jews in the Concentration Camps of Nazi Germany. What did those same Americans do while the military drug the Japanese population from their homes and sent them to Internment Camps on American soil? They stood by and did nothing.

My investigation began, because like the anonymous woman from San Francisco, I too wanted to know why the Japanese-Americans didn't fight back in 1942. I wanted to know what would cause a government that was founded on freedom and democracy to carry out a plan like this. I was curious why President Roosevelt would sign something as volatile as Executive Order 9066. I also wanted to know the details about the Internment Camps and exactly how Executive Order 9066 was carried out. I knew little about how our government managed to round up more than a hundred thousand men, women and children and ship them thousands of miles from their homes, sometimes separating families. I had many questions about what happened to the Japanese family homes when they were forced from them, or how they survived once their bank accounts were frozen. And I was curious about their treatment once these prisoners arrived at their destinations.

To find my answers, I had to go back through 60 years of American History to 1942. Using the Internet and the library as tools, I found information on World War II, Japanese Internment Camps, President Roosevelt and author Mitsuye Yamada. Reading books such as "Prisoner's Without Trial" by Roger Daniels allowed me to catch a glimpse of the ordeals that the Japanese people were put through. A biography on the life of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, written by Doris Kearns Goodwin, makes reference to the "loss of freedom" (429) when speaking of the camps. The Britannica Online Encyclopedia gives a description of Internment Camps that simply does not fit with what happened in 1942. "Internment camps were for political prisoner's who were part of groups who are confined for reasons of state security" (Concentration).

The Japanese people, whose culture and traditions are deeply rooted in such characteristics as honor, dependability and respect, were treated with hatred, prejudice, inadequate housing, poor nutrition and little or no healthcare (Weglyn 81). Internment camps were set up for those confined for reasons of state or national security, considering that more than half of those housed at the Internment Camps were infants, children and young adults who were not even old enough to vote (Weglyn xi), this seems impossible! Executive Order 9066 required "the forced removal of all people of Japanese descent from any area designated as a military zone" (Goodwin 322). In 1942, this included the entire state of California, the western half of Washington and Oregon, and the southern half of Arizona (Daniels 51). There was no measurable reason for the incarcerations other than a distrust of anyone with a Japanese face (Daniels 83).

What I did find that was measurable are the parallels in the Japanese being sent to the Internment Camps and the Jewish people being sent to the Concentration Camps. President Roosevelt even went as far as to call the Japanese relocation centers "concentration camps" (Daniels 46). All persons of Japanese descent were forced to register (Daniels 54). The families were shipped like cattle in buses and trains to their destinations (Daniels 55). The camps themselves were surrounded by "barbed wire fences, guards armed with rifles and machine guns posted in sentry towers" (Goodwin 429). Many of the guards would 'accidentally' "shoot a Jap", including children, for no other reason than a little excitement (Weglyn 91). Their belongings, which they'd not been allowed to take with them, were "rifled, stolen or sold during their absence" (Wyglyn 77). They endured extreme external temperatures. Set in the middle of the Arizona desert, Gila River Camp ranged between 125* in the summer and thirty degrees below zero in the winter (Goodwin 428).

On August 10, 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed into law H.R. 442, which formally recognized the injustices done to the Japanese in 1942. Survivors and their families were issued apologies and given monetary compensation for the loss of their jobs, homes and belongings. Forty-six years after the fact, it is in my opinion, way too little and far too late.

Works Cited

"Children of the Camps." Be More: PBS. 2008. Public Broadcasting Service. 14 Apr. 2008.

"Concentration Camp." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 14 Apr. 2008.

Daniels, Roger. Prisoner's Without Trial-Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1993.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time-Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.

Weglyn, Michi. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps. New York:

William Morrow and Company, 1976.

Yamada, Mitsuye. "To the Lady." Literature for Composition. 8th ed. Ed. Sylvan Barnet et al. New
York: Longman, 2007.