300 Pages and Counting - "Running from the Sun"
I am now at the 300 page mark on my manuscript "Running from the Sun" and while I covered huge story elements and pivotal scenes, I am currently aware that I have quite a ways to go. While much of the work now seems to focus on "highlighting" the important or subtle nuances of everday life for a child in an internment camp over the course of 4 years- nothing is that simple I am finding.
Through a child's eyes as she calls back the stories of what happened to her, you can get a number of perspectives and stories and opinions stemming from that. While she witnesses or gets involved or interacts, she picks up a great deal of perspectives and etc. from those around her.
She sees the world her way, but she sees that her parents and friends and neighbors may see the world in vastly different ways- and there are dozens of stories she could tell just from observing the differences in each person she encounters or knows. The Japanese American internment was not an experience that provided easy answers or convenient, logical, rational circumstances or reasoning. It was proposed as a solution to a problem- but the problem boils down to racists acting upon fear and war hysteria. The interned Nikkei felt the problem could have lied within themselves- they were certainly made to feel that way. The problem could have been so simple as to suggest, white supremacy was in play. Some could say that internment was a necessary evil if only to protect the Nikkei from the larger, angrier mobs of angry whites who only saw the Nikkei as a "Yellow Menace" or enemy race with links to Pearl Harbor.
It is clear that racism motivated the internment in one way or many numbers of ways. It wasn't necessarily about "protecting" Nikkei so much as it was protecting the interests of everyone else. The "protection" Nikkei got from the larger horde of racists, seemed to only be an afterthought really. The main concern on the Nikkei mind was "will we ever go home?" It did not take long for the Nikkei to understand that camp was not home and was not where they belonged. Every Nikkei born in the U.S. was an American citizen by birth- those citizens who were well aware of that fact was also well aware that they were being held under false pretenses and held against their will. The same could be said of the Isei perspective- to a different degree.
Isei knew they could never become citizens- but they had lived in the U.S. without incident or any sense of disloyalty to their host country until internment. They had every reason to believe that they could etch out a better living in the U.S. than in Japan at the time. Internment only proved to the Isei that the U.S. wasn't necesarily safer for them than Japan. The better life they thought they could get by working in the U.S. was not by any stretch guarenteed. The "promise" of the "American Dream" was false for them and unattainable at the time.
My main character, though fictional, is drawn from a collection of actual memoirs and accounts of how a children saw and experienced internment. There was sadness, moments of joy, depression, boredom, tragedy... and a semblance of ordinary life lived in a wierd state of denial. All these elements get a fair shake in my book- as the reader explores and walks alongside my charater trhough her story.
Through a child's eyes as she calls back the stories of what happened to her, you can get a number of perspectives and stories and opinions stemming from that. While she witnesses or gets involved or interacts, she picks up a great deal of perspectives and etc. from those around her.
She sees the world her way, but she sees that her parents and friends and neighbors may see the world in vastly different ways- and there are dozens of stories she could tell just from observing the differences in each person she encounters or knows. The Japanese American internment was not an experience that provided easy answers or convenient, logical, rational circumstances or reasoning. It was proposed as a solution to a problem- but the problem boils down to racists acting upon fear and war hysteria. The interned Nikkei felt the problem could have lied within themselves- they were certainly made to feel that way. The problem could have been so simple as to suggest, white supremacy was in play. Some could say that internment was a necessary evil if only to protect the Nikkei from the larger, angrier mobs of angry whites who only saw the Nikkei as a "Yellow Menace" or enemy race with links to Pearl Harbor.
It is clear that racism motivated the internment in one way or many numbers of ways. It wasn't necessarily about "protecting" Nikkei so much as it was protecting the interests of everyone else. The "protection" Nikkei got from the larger horde of racists, seemed to only be an afterthought really. The main concern on the Nikkei mind was "will we ever go home?" It did not take long for the Nikkei to understand that camp was not home and was not where they belonged. Every Nikkei born in the U.S. was an American citizen by birth- those citizens who were well aware of that fact was also well aware that they were being held under false pretenses and held against their will. The same could be said of the Isei perspective- to a different degree.
Isei knew they could never become citizens- but they had lived in the U.S. without incident or any sense of disloyalty to their host country until internment. They had every reason to believe that they could etch out a better living in the U.S. than in Japan at the time. Internment only proved to the Isei that the U.S. wasn't necesarily safer for them than Japan. The better life they thought they could get by working in the U.S. was not by any stretch guarenteed. The "promise" of the "American Dream" was false for them and unattainable at the time.
My main character, though fictional, is drawn from a collection of actual memoirs and accounts of how a children saw and experienced internment. There was sadness, moments of joy, depression, boredom, tragedy... and a semblance of ordinary life lived in a wierd state of denial. All these elements get a fair shake in my book- as the reader explores and walks alongside my charater trhough her story.
posted by The Vampire, David at 9:38 AM
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