I read about the story of Peter Ota, a Nasei; or Hawaiian-Japanese. After Pearl Harbor, Ota and his family were arrested and sent to internment camps. The living conditions there were terrible. “The barracks was all there was. There were no trees, no kind of landscaping. It was like a prison camp. Coming from our environment, it was just devastating” (Terkel 207). Peter Ota’s father put his faith in the US government; he believed that it would do anything that bad to its own citizens. Ota’s father was wrong, these camps destroyed many lives and families. The US government imprisoned innocent Japanese Americans out of fear and racism. America was making the same mistakes that other European nation made in past centuries, mistakes that America was determined not to repeat.

I also read a story about Betty Basye Hutchinson, a nurse in World War II. After Pearl Harbor, she wanted to do something to help in the war effort. “Immediately, I was going to become a nurse. That was the fastest thing I could do to help our boys” (Terkel 211). Hutchinson was on the orthopedic ward, she was struck by horror when she saw all the injuries that soldiers were sustaining in combat; it’s a lesson on Man’s cruelty to Man. I must’ve been incredibly hard for nurses to do their jobs. It was up to them to save many lives. It must’ve been devastating when a patient died right in front of you, after making all that effort to save them.