WWII Lessons Come Alive in Japanese Americans' Tales

Veterans Recall Discrimination

In 1942, Mary Tamaki Murakami was 13 years old when she and her family were forced to board a U.S. Army-guarded train that took them from their California home to an internment camp for Japanese Americans in Utah.

Caught in the wave of hysteria that followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan, Murakami's family was among thousands of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast who were forced to live in guarded camps during World War II.

"My parents took pictures and gave them to each of us because they didn't know if our family would stay intact," Murakami told students last week at Wheaton High School.

Murakami, 80, of Bethesda joined three Japanese American war veterans in sharing their experiences with ninth-graders to help put human faces on the students' history lessons about World War II. Their message was simple.

"Imagine, I was your age when this happened to me," Murakami told the students. "As an American, always be alert to the abuse of yours and others' civil rights."

The speakers were invited to the school by U.S. history teacher Lauren Mincher as part of an informal partnership between the county schools, the Japanese American Veterans Association and other groups.

Terry Shima, one of the speakers and executive director of the Japanese American Veterans Association, said the veterans visit schools because they believe it is important for students to be aware of the discrimination they experienced so that it won't happen again.

"We want, by our example, that no ethnic groups suffer the same kind of treatment that we were subjected to," said Shima, 84, of Gaithersburg.

The group also has spoken at Gaithersburg High School and Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Shima said.

"For us, it is a pleasure, because we want to tell our story," said Shima, a native of Hawaii. "We feel that not enough people know about our World War II experience, and one of our goals is to get the message out. We don't have all that many years to do this."

Most students seemed to listen intently to the speakers, and several had questions. Ninth-grader Monica Gutierrez, 14, of Silver Spring was especially impressed with Murakami's experience in the Utah internment camp.

"For me, it would have been really scary being there," she told Murakami, adding that she would find it difficult to leave most of her possessions behind as Murakami had done when she was sent to the camp.