Peter Ota & Betty Hutchinson

Peter Ota's story showed how hard it was for Japanese Americans to be living in the United States during WW2. Since America was fighting Japan, they extended the concept of Japan being the enemy all the way down to Japanese Americans living in the United States. Japanese Americans had to leave everything they knew just because of something they couldn't control, their race. I thought it was interesting what Peter Ota mentioned about freedom. When talking about educating in the camps, he said, "ONe of our basic subjects was American history. They talked about freedom all the time" (207). I thought it was interesting that in a place where the Japanese Americans were being denied their freedom, they were being forced to learn so much about American freedom and its importance in American culture. Peter Ota also expressed his feelings about how necessary it was for them to act like "Americans." When Peter Ota and his family were returned back to society they tried to establish a life for themselves that was very "American." "We became more American than Americans, very conservative. My wife and I, we talk about this. We thought it was the thing we had to do: to blend into the community and become part of white America" (209). Peter Ota and his family felt that after being imprisoned for having a Japanese heritage, they didn't want anything like that to happen to their family. They felt the only way to prevent this was by trying to conform to the white American lifestyle.

I thought Betty Hutchinson's point of view of her life during the war showed what it was like to be a nurse helping all the wounded soldiers. Betty Hutchinson's life was changed after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She felt that there was no other option but to do her part in helping. "Immediately, I was going to become a nurse. It was the fastest thing I could do to help our boys" (211). This shows how like many other Americans, Betty Hutchinson tried to help as much as she possibly could. I think it shows how much people were influenced when something happened on American territory. In previous years, fighting had never affected the United States on the homefront. The bombing of Pearl Harbor caught the attention of every United States citizen and everyone was willing to help out in anyway possible.