Hi everyone,
In our ASTU class we have been assigned the book Obasan. This book by Joy Kogawa is the story of a woman named Naomi who, as a child, was labeled an enemy alien along with her family after the Pearl Harbor bombing by the Japanese. She was separated from her mother while her aunt, Obasan, assists her in surviving. Once Naomi becomes an adult who teaches in a small town, and after the passing of her Uncle, she is able to comprehend her past of adversity and accept the role that her Obasan played.
The Japanese immigrants, many of whom had established lives, were removed from their homes and had their freedom taken away after 1942; this occurred until April 1, 1949 (CBC, Japanese Internment, 2001). Knowing this while reading made me think about the History of Canada, and it made me question how such things could happen. And then the answer of fear came to mind. As a society we fear the different, we generalize and don’t account for every individual and what their vast differences could be from someone else who looks ‘like them’; we only see what we want to see.
In the case of the Japanese internment camps, this was a very unfortunate generalization. Canada and the government of that time believed that there was a problem of this group of people, just as the Nazi’s believed of the Jewish people. The injustice that was shown towards Japanese decedents whose life was in Canada was truly not right. In the story of Obasan, we see that one can accept the past and learn to live with what’s been done to them, but the tragedy is that not everyone has that capability. With this I ask myself if we are able to accept fear in our lives, without letting it control us? Wasn’t the little girl of the novel fearful of her future? How did her Obasan help her? What about those who didn’t have someone to care for them during this time? What allows one persons fear to be greater than another’s? Why do we often acknowledge a fear, with another fear?
How do we let fear control us in today’s society?
Too many questions to ask, when no one truly has the answers.
-Mckaylee Catcher.
Works Cited:
CBC. (2001). Japanese Internment. Retrieved from www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP14CH3PA3LE.html.