By: Hayley Strahs

Graphics Editor

On Jan. 21, LGHS freshmen enrolled in Honors English 9 went on an optional field trip to the Japanese American Museum of San Jose to augment their current unit on the Japanese internment camps.

The Japanese American Museum of San Jose (JAMsj) has been open since 1987 and features a plethora of Japanese American history. From the Japanese immigration boom in the late 1800s and early 1900s to the Japanese internment in the 1940s, the JAMsj provides a comprehensive look into the past 150 years of Japanese American history. For the last few years, LGHS has participated in an annual field trip to the museum to help students better understand the horrors of Japanese internment camps. For their first unit of the second semester, freshman Honors English students read Farewell to Manzanar, an autobiography by Jean Wakatsuki Houston detailing her experience in Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp. The students then reflect on what they have read in Farewell to Manzanar and have seen at the JAMsj field trip.

On the field trip, students received a tour of the museum, in which they visited various rooms with relics from the 1940s, including a room modeled after the abysmal living conditions in the internment camps. The sixteen-foot by twenty-foot room contained four beds, cardboard cabinets based on those which the internees had to make themselves, a small wooden desk with a lamp, a small stove, and a single lightbulb. Freshman Samantha Ematrudo remarked that the room “showed what [imprisoned Japanese Americans] lived through in a more visual way.” In addition, JAMsj docent Yoshiko Kanazawa gave a compelling presentation to the students detailing her experience living in an internment camp and how it went on to influence her life decades later.

After the tour, the students walked to the Issei Memorial Building and San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin. While students were not able to enter the memorial building or church, they had the opportunity to observe the exterior architecture and decorations of both buildings. The Issei Memorial Building, once the Kuwabara Hospital until 1934, featured a “metal statue thing that was pretty cool, and Mrs. McQuade talked a bit about it,” according to Ematrudo. As for the church, students quietly observed the garden out front so as not to disturb the service taking place inside.

Despite technically being optional, over fifty passionate Honors English 9 students showed up early on a Sunday morning to dive deeper into Japanese American history at the JAMsj this past weekend.

(Sources: Japanese American Museum of San Jose, California Japantowns)