Race and power in the US - Essay Example

Tule Lake!!! I had to stop making your father’s supper. I have only heard that name in my nightmares for the past thirty years. I know you children have always assumed that during World War II I was in Europe with your father. I was not. My wartime experiences are a matter of deep shame. To start with, all I have told you about your grandmother is true. My mother was born in Tokyo to poor parents. Upon marrying my father, they both dreamed of coming to America. My parents believed that if one worked hard enough in America, one could achieve greatness.

They both worked to save the money for the ocean voyage. Upon my mother’s realization that she was pregnant, both my parents made a difficult choice. They had saved enough money for one. My father decided to send my mother ahead to America. They wanted their child born on American soil. My mother arrived in 1924, a few months before I was born. After we arrived in San Francisco, my mother worked as a dishwasher to support both of us. Mother saved every spare penny to bring father to America, but by the time they had saved the money, the restrictions on immigration had tightened.

My mother and father were still going through the red tape when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The tensions in Japan had been rising before. I remember as a teenager, the headlines of Japan invading China. I was afraid for the father I had never met. Father’s letters started coming few and far between, then after Pearl Harbor stopped all together. Mother was frantic. Oddly enough, when the flyers calling for “Japanese Americans” to relocate my mother and I were not too concerned. I do not know if my mother thought we would be returned to Japan or not.

She did think we would be reunited with father upon the completion of the war, one way or another. We lived in an apartment away from our Japanese friends in an all white neighborhood. Our landlord pressured us out of