Clara Breed’s Children
3 points
- American youth were brought up and conditioned to see all Japanese people, whether they were from Japan, or Japanese-American, as ugly, mean spirited, and sinister.
- There was school in the internment camps, but not for the students who had graduated highschool and were in/planning to attend college.
- Something that was mentioned not only in the article about Miss Breed, but also in class when we were sharing about the letters we had all chosen to read, was that the children would put a “bright spin” on their situations in the internment camps. They either described things in a way that painted them out to be better than they were, or every time they wrote about something bad, they’d follow it up with a positive
2 quotations
- “She and her friend dressed in sailor suits and each carried an American flag in one hand and a Japanese flag in the other. As they tap-danced across the stage, each time they raised their hands with the American flags the audience cheered. When they raised the Japanese flags the audience booed.” (Dear Miss Breed Introduction, page 14)
- “I wondered why her father was being held in a different camp from Fusa and her mother.” and “Like Fusa, his father was being held in a federal prison.” (Dear Miss Breed Introduction, pages 12 and 13)
1 question
- Did many of Miss Breed’s children have a relationship with each other? If so, did they keep in touch throughout their lives?