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to Children in Internment Camps
An evacuee
recalls his childhood experiences in the Manzanar Relocation Center
in California.
In
some ways, I suppose, my life was not too different from a lot
of kids in America between the years 1942 and 1945.1 spent a
good part of my time playing with my brothers and friends, learned
to shoot marbles, watched sandlot baseball and envied the older
kids who wore Boy Scout uniforms. We shared with the rest of
America the same movies, screen heroes and listened to the same
heart rending songs of the forties. We imported much of America
into the camps because, after all, we were Americans. Through
imitation of my brothers, who attended grade school within the
camp, I learned the salute to the flag by the time I was five
years old. I was learning, as best as one could learn in Manzanar,
what it meant to live in America. But, I was also learning the
sometimes bitter price one has to pay for it.
Quoted
in Personal Justice Denied, 12
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