3rd Week of Thoughts

This week we read letters from the Japanese interment camps during WW2.We talked a lot in class the propaganda linked to these camps, because it sounded like a mere relocation of these people, but it was very much not that. These people were housed with shots roofs, and not fed correctly, and over one thousand people died due to malnutrition. The letters we read from this period were written by kids in these camps, and the way they describe them, is not as bad as what the facts say. Kids talk about the activities they do and the crafts they get to make, one girl in class said it sounded like they were talking about a summer camp. Which was true, most kids had only positive things to say about their experience, and how new and exciting their life was. I found these two points to link back to our writings on our second week and the impact of propaganda. How taking the perspective of kids can make something seem so much better than it actually is. Kids are naive and will see good in anything, and using these letters as way ti describe the conditions is almost unfair. On a surface level it seems that these kids re enjoying their new lives, and most people will not look in between the lines. This now reminds me of what we learned in my History of education class. How America took Native Americans and forced them to be American. They did things like make kids have to cut their hair which was very sacred to their culture. These kids were miserable and tried to run away or interrupt their ‘learning’ in any way they could. These schools were known as Native American schools, which to the public sounds good because they are education a race that is lesser in the society, but in reality they are forcing these kids to forget their home roots and be a new person. These two places are very easily misunderstood due to the clever names for the both of them. Propaganda is all around us, and it takes our own perspective and willingness to learn in order to find out the truth