Studs Terkel 6: The Good War

The first interview I read was with Peter Ota.  Peter's father was put in jail because he is of Japanese decent.  He said it was shameful to see his dad behind bars and in prison clothes.  This showed me another example of racism going on during the 1900's that wasn't only directed towards blacks.  Peter said that the worst part was that in Japanese culture "shame was worse than death."  Peter later was reunited with his dad at an internment camp.  He was later drafted into the army and talked about the irony of fighting for freedom when he wasn't free himself.  Reading this made me think about how cruel and hypocritical the U.S. was because they were against Hitler having concentration camps but they were doing the same thing.  I think that the entire country wouldn't have thought so badly of Japanese-Americans if the U.S. had not interned them because then there would be no bandwagon for people to follow.  Peter also said that he only ever wanted the American dream and that by the end of the war he had become part of white America.  The connection I made with this was when Spain first went to Mexico and forced Christianity upon them.  America changed people to become more "American" even though America is a big melting pot. 

The second interview I read was with Betty Basye who graduated high school in 1941.  News such as Pearl Harbor didnt' travel as quickly because of the lack of technology.  She had many friends that were killed in Pearl Harbor which prompted her to help the war effort.  She became a nurse in the army.  I thought that this some what connected to 9/11 because it was an attack from another country but the difference was that people heard about 9/11 instantaneously.  It also didn't connect because not everyone liked the war on terrorism but many people during the 1940's supported the war.  Betty said that her first experience with soldiers was gruesome and disgusting.  I was trying to understand but I still could probably never conceive what the war was actually like.  She said, "I never really became used to it."  I thought about every nurse and medic during the war that saw scarring and gross things.  She ended up marrying a soldier that was wounded and ended by saying, "you could never get the father of my four children to talk about the war."  Hopefully I will never need to see what war is like but as of right now it is something beyond me that I could never fully connect with.