I don't watch much audiovisual media so I probably wouldn't watch that miniseries, but I would be very glad to know it existed. Alas for imperfect worlds. :-(
I am 31 and grew up in northern New Jersey, and we were taught about the Japanese internment camps -- not in great detail, but they were mentioned, and specifically mentioned as being a betrayal of what America is supposed to stand for. I can't remember what year this was specifically -- maybe junior year of high school?
There is a lot of history erasure that happens around wars and the way Americans react to people who share the ethnicity of the current enemy, whoever that happens to be. For instance, before WWI, there were thriving German immigrant enclaves all through America, with their own (German-language) newspapers and restaurants and holidays and so on. By the end of the war? Gone. Few people remained overtly German; instead, they presented themselves as generic white Americans of no claimed ethnic heritage. This is obviously nowhere near the horror of internment camps, and German immigrants at least had the option of passing, but it surprised me a lot when I learned that so many felt a need to pass.
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Date: 2013-08-01 02:08 am (UTC)I am 31 and grew up in northern New Jersey, and we were taught about the Japanese internment camps -- not in great detail, but they were mentioned, and specifically mentioned as being a betrayal of what America is supposed to stand for. I can't remember what year this was specifically -- maybe junior year of high school?
There is a lot of history erasure that happens around wars and the way Americans react to people who share the ethnicity of the current enemy, whoever that happens to be. For instance, before WWI, there were thriving German immigrant enclaves all through America, with their own (German-language) newspapers and restaurants and holidays and so on. By the end of the war? Gone. Few people remained overtly German; instead, they presented themselves as generic white Americans of no claimed ethnic heritage. This is obviously nowhere near the horror of internment camps, and German immigrants at least had the option of passing, but it surprised me a lot when I learned that so many felt a need to pass.