We Forget Who We Are

“America is not one story with one narrator. It’s a collection of short stories from different voices and different times and different people who have very different experiences but have something that makes them uniquely American.”

Often in the past many of us where taught American history where there was one narrator, and that narrator was often enough white or one main culture. If you did not belong to that one race or culture you saw yourself on the outside or did not fit in.

The story of Japanese Americans incarcerated in detention camps during World War II is one of the stories. This chapter in American history is rarely told and is one of the saddest and most disgraceful in our USA history.

A group of four educators, from around the country, in collaboration with the Smithsonian and the National Veterans Network have put together educational materials about the experiences of Japanese Americans who lived at this time in US history. These materials are for elementary and middle school children. The purpose of this innovative program is not only to open children to many different chapters/stories which make up American history but to teach children, at a very young age, about tolerance, fairness, compassion for differences in others they encounter in their lives. It is a disservice to our young people to leave out of their education, these periods of our collective history.

As is often said if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. The stories of the experiences of the incarcerated Japanese Americans help students to see the present-day implications and what these stories say about our collective values. Families separated at our southern US border, children living in cages speaks to the fact that we really have not learned from our past. Xenophobia and racism have re-emerged. Cultural beliefs determine our actions.

As is stated well by these educators: “How can events from the past inform the decisions we make today? If we do not start with our young children to teach them tolerance, justice, fairness and that it is okay to be different, we are truly doomed to keep repeating the sins of our past.

For more information about teach tolerance to youth, go to: www.tolerance.org. Teaching Tolerance is an educational arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center.