Thursday, March 31, 2016

Journal 7-Dillan

Part 1
Mr. Tanimoto has got to be one of the most interesting characters from this book. The man is basically a hero in my mind. It's amazing that he survived the explosion without receiving a scratch, and while so many others ran and hid Tanimoto used his healthy body to run into the death and destruction in an attempt to save those who couldn't help themselves. I think that he showed a phenomenal amount of humility and strength in the fallout from the explosion. I think we could learn a lot about bravery and humanity from his story alone.

"Mr. Tanimoto found about twenty men and women on the sandspit. He drove the boat onto the bank and urged them to get aboard. They did not move and he realized that they were too weak to lift themselves [...] he got out into the water and, though a small man, lifted several of the men and woman, who were naked, into his boat [...] his bamboo pole was now too short and he had to paddle most of the way across with it[...]it took him three trips to get them all across the river."

Part 2
I remember watching a documentary when I was younger that was about prison camps that were being held in the U.S. to house Japanese citizens. Both immigrants from Japan and American citizens that could trace their family lineage back to Japan were kept in these camps after the attack at Pearl Harbor and during WWII. The order for their incarceration occurred on February 19, 1942, and the order was given out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Nearly 120,000 Japanese American citizens, which many were second or third generation Americans, were forcibly relocated and incarcerated due to the mass hysteria and racism that developed after Pearl Harbor. Ultimately, there was little to no evidence of these Japanese Americans being disloyal or having any ties to the attack. I think this subject shows us how afraid the typical American was of the Japanese around the events of WWII, and it may give us some incite into their mindset prior to the bombing of Hiroshima.
An American prison camp for Japanese American citizens

5 comments:

  1. I definitely agree with your views on Mr. Tanimoto, the bravery that he showed and the personal sacrifices that he made were absolutely amazing, its the kind of people that we would want to have in situations like this. The difference that sets him apart from the rest is the sense that he used when saving people, like we talked about in class, he only helped the people that weren't severely injured to make sure that people that could have lived weren't dying because he was helping someone that was going to die anyways. His thought process was almost calm and precise in making the best decisions. I like that you chose something that was on our own homefront, I've seen many about Japan. Its interesting to see how people were reacting to the bombing in America. This makes me think of Logical Insanity, does it make it okay to do this to civilians if it means that we are protecting on own country due to the high stakes of war that we are facing?

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  2. Mr. Tanimoto was a great hero also. I believe that there were many heroes during this tragic time, we were just blessed with hearing about these few. Mr Tanimoto did many things to help others without consideration of himself. The amount of people he helped and the deads he did were amazing.

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  3. I think the interment camps were horrible, but I like the point you made. It shows just how scared America was about the Japanese. To understand why we did what we did we have to try and think in the head-space they were in, we have to understand the logic in their insanity.

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  4. I think the interment camps were horrible, but I like the point you made. It shows just how scared America was about the Japanese. To understand why we did what we did we have to try and think in the head-space they were in, we have to understand the logic in their insanity.

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  5. The internment camps is an attrocity that the United States commited and i do not think that we have learned completely from it. Xenophobia is increasing heavily as the United States and media become more and more focused on issues such as radical terrorism and ISIL. I myself as a first generation palestinian american grow increasingly afraid of the reprocussions of the mass public rallying around a man such as Donald Trump. If he ever were to become president, I fear that internment camps for Muslims and first generation Arabs is a reality that is not to far away or hard to comprehend. Hopefully, enough people can learn from the past, and understand that these people are more loyal to their new home now than a minuscule sect of Islam.

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