Japanese American Memorial in Portland
Hitomi Matsui
My
favorite poem at the Japanese American Memorial in Portland is “Sure, I go to
school Same as you. I’m an American” The reason I chose this poem is this poem
is pretty simple, but it has a strong impression and meaning for me. Through
reading this poem, I felt pity for Japanese Americans who lived during that
time. I imagined Japanese American students at that time must be eager to go to
school, but the Americans around them were unfriendly for them when they saw
Japanese Americans. The situation at that time did not allow Japanese Americans
to go school or do something freely like now. If they can go school, maybe there
was still much discrimination for Japanese American people. They must have felt
that this is not fair. One of the part of this poem ”I’m an American citizen”
shows Japanese Americans wanted to be treated equally by American people. Also
for me this poem sounds a little aggressive, but I feel they pretended to be
tough. Actually they were also nervous of their situation, but they also got
offended and despised by American people. I think they tried to think about going
to school like other Americans is natural and no wonder for Japanese American.
They may tried to encourage themselves like ‘”Of course we go school.” by
creating such a poem. It’s sad thing that young people have to live with
discrimination. It was my first time to see such a poem which was written by
Japanese Americans. To see the poem on the rock directly like this, I felt I
could understand their feeling more than before.