As of that moment, the Japanese in the United States became, by virtue of their ineradicable brownness and the slant eyes which, upon close inspection, will seldom appear slanty, animals of a different breed.
The book begins with a Preface stating the date of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese planes. That is the “moment” which is referenced here and its significance to the Japanese-American experience cannot be underestimated. Germany and Italy were behaving no less aggressively on the world stage than Japan, but it was only those of Japanese ancestry who were uprooted from their homes and forced to stay in interment camps. The author here is suggesting that reason for this divergence of “national security” measures was based on sheer physical difference. Whatever the reason, the allusion to dehumanization is appropriate.
“Maybe I look Japanese and my father and mother and brothers and sisters look Japanese, but we're better Americans than the regular ones because that's the way it has to be when one looks Japanese but is really a good American.”
The duality of foreign heritage and present location is at all times something of an issue for Americans, especially the first few generations. But that duality cannot help but shoot straight to the surface and become perhaps the defining issue for certain people during wartime. The Japanese-Americans were locked in the camps not due to any evidence that their sense of identity had made a hard shift to the homeland. Truth be told, they were kept under lock, key and watchful eyes for absolutely no reason at all. Other than that which the author lays out in his Preface. German-Americans were not rounded up and kept from providing aid and comfort to the Fatherland. Italian-Americans not only remained free, but the worst of their lost—members of the Mafia—actually colluded with the American government in the name of fighting for—not democracy—but free enterprise.
“Where is that place they talk of and paint nice pictures of and describe in all the homey magazines? Where is that place with the clean, white cottages surrounding the new, red-brick church with the clean, white steeple, where the families all have two children, one boy and one girl, and a shiny new car in the garage and a dog and a cat and life is like living in the land of the happily-ever-after? Surely it must be around here someplace, someplace in America. Or is it just that it's not for me?”
The myth of the American Dream has always been that it is available to one and all, but only those who work hard to attain it will actually enjoy it. Despite all available evidence to the contrary going all the way back to that long hot summer in 1776 when the country was born, the myth persists even today. Tens of millions of Americans continue to believe—despite seeing that it is not true every day—that the American dream is built on endeavor and wealth is the ones who want it. But when paradise is nothing more than a clean cottage, a new car and pets and people with endeavor who do want to enjoy the wealth that is so pervasive, how can anyone denied it not believe that someone has decided the living the dream just isn’t for them? If all those men (and women) who were treated specially during World War II due only to the shape of their eyes and the color of their skin and the island their great-grandparents called home were really born equal, it would be much easier to dismiss Ichiro's rhetorical question as sour grapes.
No. 27: Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on com- bat duty, wherever ordered?
No. 28: Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?
Just because Japanese-American men of a certain age were taken from their homes, deprived of their rights and forced to live in interment camps didn’t mean that they were also freed from the responsibility of answering the call to be drafted into the military. In fact, joining the service was one way to get out of the internment camps. There was just one catch with two parts; one might refer to it as Catch-27-slash-28. Those Japanese-Americans who answered yes to both these questions were welcomed to join the fight against fascism. Those who answered "no" twice became the men who give the novel its title.
