Blog # 6 Peter Ota / Betty Basye Hutchinson

In the story of Peter Ota it talks about the Japanese concentration camps and what it was like for him. He talks about how his father was at a wedding and the FBI agents rounded up people and took them to the county jail. Peter's father was a very outgoing person and had worked so hard to get the life that he did and how in the blink of an eye it just went away. Peter remembers thinking, "at the time we [his sister and him] didn't know were we were going, how long we'd be gone. We didn't know what to take. A toothbrush, toilet supplies, some clothes. Only what you could carry. We left with a caravan" (Terkel 206). This shows how sudden it was when during WWII the American Japanese citizens were being treated. It disgusts me to even think that we would do something like that to our own people. We were fighting against the Japanese, and people feared that maybe the American-Japanese citizens were giving away information, but even if that were true, the entire American Japanese citizens did not have to suffer. I remember watching a video clip in class of the Japanese citizens lining up at the railroads to go to the camps that they were assigned. How cruel. They were treated with no respect and they were so innocent and were not doing anything wrong. It was the way everyone else in the world viewed them The Japanese people would get looks and people saying things to them like "dirty jap's". It would be very hurtful. It makes me feel ashamed of America that we did this to them.

In the story of Betty Basye Hutchinson she became a nurse after she realized what had happened at Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor is when America got involved with WWII because they were attacked. American citizens started to sign up for war and do things to help with the war. Betty became a nurse and helped in that way. Betty, "wanted to really have something to do with the war" (Terkel 212). Her dedication and how she is being tested. One thing that I never really thought about was how the men reacted when they saw the women. Betty said that it was important to the men to have young nurses around them. I feel like that is because they are off fighting in the war and they are away from their home and their everyday life. Betty had a really busy life and, "you could never get the father of [her] four children to talk about the war. it was like [they] had put blinders on the past" (Terkel 217). Sometimes it is difficult to pick up the pieces from where you left off and certain topics are just left unsaid. War was difficult to talk about because so much emotion and memory go along with it and people have a hard time coming to terms with their own feelings alot of the time.