Internment Camps in the United States
Miyuki is old enough to have been a
child during World War II. Indeed, some of her students are that old as
well but they are eager to learn and listen to her carefully.
She
is a teacher of floral arrangements in the Japanese style of Ikenobo
but her face always seems sadder than the flowers in the beautiful
arrangements she makes. Her life has been a mixture of grief and joy.
Her parents emigrated to the United States from Japan before World War II and Miyuki was
born in Seattle. Her parents owned a newspaper there but it was
confiscated by the government when they and their children were sent to
an internment camp during the war.
After the war Miyuki’s
parents did not get their newspaper back nor were they compensated for
it. But they found another way to make a living. They opened a flower
shop and their daughter Miyuki dealt with customers after school. Bilingual by then, she spoke beautiful English.
Between customers she
would watch her parents make arrangements and in time learned the art of
Ikenobo, arranging flowers in the spartan Japanese style that proves
less can certainly be more. She has been teaching Ikenobo now in America
for more than 50 years. She is certified as a professor of Ikenobo by
the society that overseas the Ikenobo school in Japan.
Every once in a while Miyuki pauses
in her classes to discuss different aspects of Japanese culture with
her mostly Caucasian students, ladies of similar age and above-average
means. They seem to enjoy these interjections as much as learning how to
arrange flowers in the Ikenobo style.
One day Miyuki took
time to explain that because she was born in America to Japanese
immigrants she is classified in the Japanese community as Nisei. Her
children, born here as well, are classified as Sansei and her
grandchildren as Yonsei. She did not say much more about that but
her students realize that she is often as spartan in her comments about
Japanese-American life as she is in the Ikenobo arrangements she makes
on her table in front of the class.
Some of her American students were children as Miyuki was
during the war with Japan. They have a vague memory of President
Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many think Truman did the right thing, a few think it was a mistake, and the rest aren't sure.
But many of them
wonder if putting Japanese Americans in internment camps during World
War II had any merit. Perhaps they think about it even more now as the
tumult in America grows over the conflict with ISIS and its verbal
threats toward America.
In the aftermath of
Nine Eleven, everyone remains wary. What next? But so far, there has
been no talk of internment camps for Muslim Americans, which in effect
would be an encore of what happened to Japanese Americans during World
War II.
Perhaps some day a student will ask Miyuki what
she would think as an American citizen about establishing internment
camps for Muslims in America should the conflict with ISIS continue to
grow and begin to present a very real threat to the United States. She
might have mixed feelings as many of her students do now when they think
about not only the atomic bombs dropped on Japan but also the
disruption in the lives of Japanese Americans during and after the war.
It’s obvious this
small group of people interested in learning how to make beautiful
flower arrangements has much to think about regarding what has happened
in the past, what is happening now and what may happen in the future. In
this respect they are no different than every other citizen in the
United States today.
Donal Mahoney
