‘American’ History
We had a chaplaincy film night this evening at one of the colleges that I work for where we viewed Snow Falling on Cedars, an excellent adaptation of David Guterson’s novel of the same title. I would highly recommend both the both the book and the film; the former for its flowing poetic language and intense detail and the latter for its hauntingly beautiful cinematography. The plot concerns the death of a fisherman working off the coast of a small island in the northwestern United States, but much of the story takes place during World War II and revolves around the many Japanese-Americans who were sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. There are those would probably like to forget that we locked up these people, the majority of whom were American citizens, for no other reason than their ethnic background, many of whom had in fact been born in the United States, the children of Japanese immigrants.
Two things were particularly striking about the short discussion that we had afterwards with some of the students who had watched the film. First was the fact that none of them had been aware of these American internment camps. Now, to be fair, these were British students, and I have already learned in my time here that the teaching of American history in this country is spotty at best. (In fact, the teaching of history here is not very good generally as I seem to have learned more about British history than many university students that I have met!) However, as the camps are a piece of American history that I certainly learned about in school, it was fascinating to hear the reactions of these students upon learning about it for the first time. As the film makes clear, this is still something that it in some ways still an open wound in the hearts and minds of many Americans.
The other thing of note in our conversations was the parallel to many events that we have been seeing today in the wake of the war in Iraq and the terrorist attacks of September 11th. While both the novel and the film tell a story about America’s past, it is clear to me that this is a piece of our history that we have not learned from. We have detained a number of American citizens over the past few years, without trial, for no other reason than that they have Middle Eastern ancestry. George Santayana’s famous quote is perhaps too much overused, but there is definitely truth to it:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
I am concerned that we are in the process of repeating a part of our history, and doing so because we are not teaching people about it – perhaps even denying that it happened so as to ease our consciences. If even students at one of the best universities in the United Kingdom have not heard about these events, can we really assume that the majority of Americans are aware of them either? This kind of thing should not have been allowed to happen in the 1940’s and it should not be allowed to happen today. We must remember and learn from our history, no matter how painful, since we already seem to find ourselves repeating it.
