3 points: the children sent letters to Clara Breed and felt safe enough to talk to her about their experiences in the camps, expressing how they felt (ex. some children complained how they were only allowed showers for 2,000+ people. sometimes they didn’t have access to basic food, like dairy, eggs, butter… there were some schools that were created so that the children could learn during this time, so they were grateful for that and grateful to miss breed for giving them books, responding to them.). The letter i specifically read was from Christmas Day and Hisako Watanabe’s brother, Jack, didn’t have any toys for Christmas and the books that Clara Breed gave made up for the loss of joy during their time in internment. Clara Breed helped the children and young adults by sending letters and assisting with requests for supplies and advocating for activism, which is very admirable and something to emulate. Clara breed was simply a librarian at San Diego Public Library, and when she saw that there were children in need of help, she was one of the few people that Japanese American young adults and children looked up to and sent letters to.
2 questions: Reading the letters that the children wrote makes me question just how the exectuive order was able to pass in the first place. While I understand that the Japanese were fighting alongside the Nazis (Axis power alliance) I don’t recall having seen this occur in other instances of history… where the U.S. imprisons American citizens that just happen descend from a country in which we are fighting a war against (ex. this has never happened to the British citizens during the War of 1812, or Spanish citizens during the Spanish-American war). While this may just be attributed to racism, it is just utterly mind-boggling. I had read that Eleanor Roosevelt had tried to persuade FDR against passing the executive order, but even then he continued to let it pass.
Another question which came to mind during the readings was I wonder what it was like for Clara Breed to receive so many letters from these children’s. It must have been emotionally and mentally distressing to read what the children were going through, especially when she received letters from such a numerous amount of children. Her way of comforting them was solely through books, and perhaps this helped give her some piece of mind that they could live some semblance of a normal childhood. But I know for myself that reading through these letters caused my heart to ache, knowing that these innocent children had to suffer and experience such trauma out of the irrationality of the U.S. government… and knowing how I personally felt I can’t imagine how Clara Breed or the children felt during that time.
1 aha moment: these letters gave great insight into what it was like to be a child living in the internment camps. While in a regular history class you can learn the facts of internment and the hrrible conditions that Japanese Americans had to live through just for being a different race during WWII, the letters written by children help emphasize just how cruel the Internment camps were. Children are not prone to lying, and are often uncensored with their thoughts. Their complaints about food, showering, and their lack of toys help to reaffirm the tragdey that was Executive Order 9066.
