There are many forms of  “hate” in today’s world. You can always hate an author or a politician for their actions, but you can never hate a person simply based on their ethnicity. Asian American hate is one of the more prevalent forms of racism still found today, especially during these times from the Coronavirus. An uneducated person can assume that all Asian Americans carry the blame for the virus’ spread across the United States, which is the typical foundation for the majority of the received hate. Yet, to a more extreme degree, this situation happened almost 80 years ago within the states. I’m talking about Japanese internment camps brought about from the fear after the Pearl Harbor attack.

There’s a great story out there called “They Called Us Enemy” which does a great job at encapsulating the memories of many that went through the internment camps. It started when Japan first attacked the United States. This attack was immediately met with a silent, but prevalent beginning of mistrust between Japanese Americans, and despite many of them being born in America, they were still cast out into camps as potential unknown threats. The story in question follows a young boy by the name of George Takei whose family is uprooted from their suburban home in Los Angeles, a home his parents had worked hard to obtain, to a camp in the middle of no where. And how were these camps you may ask? They were a shoddy shanty town surrounded by barbed wire which contained, livable, yet horrible conditions for the family. George Takei from the novel himself claimed that,” The houses steamed like a furnace when he first opened the door”. As time went on, many within the camp had begun to protest their stay, and claimed it as an unconstitutional incarceration. Yet, these statements had barely made it out of the camp itself, before being squashed by camp guards.

As the war drew to an end, many Japanese Americans were  released with little to nothing to their name, having to start at rock bottom once again. Decades after this incident however, America’s cogs of democracy had begun to turn in the favor of Japanese Americans as the then president Ronald Reagan began to right America’s wrongs. He claimed that America was fully liable for the lost years of Japanese Americans, and reimbursed them with a check. The check was lackluster, but it was more as a statement, that America had recognized the unconstitutional acts it had committed so many years ago.

As much as I would love a world without any form of hate on any race, I know that it would be far from achievable by today’s standards. Hate on certain races has always been prevalent in one way or another, but the strides America has taken to attempt to fix its past is respectable at the least. Hopefully one day, we can live in a peaceful world in which everyone can co-exist.

(Cover image is from the novel “They Called Us Enemy”, by George Takei)