By Penelope Morris

Although I unfortunately was not able to attend the Pearl Harbor memorial event, I was deeply moved looking through the pictures taken by the class. One that especially touched me was this one, showing Japanese soldiers recruited by the United States army to fight in the Second World War– it’s hard to imagine what they must have been feeling at that moment. On one hand, they were Americans, and I’ve heard many accounts of Japanese Americans who were proud to fight for the U.S. On the other hand, fighting against one’s homeland must be a difficult thing to do no matter if one was born there or not. Additionally, this photo was taken just a few months after the United States government began imprisoning Japanese Americans in internment camps, so this likely complicated the new soldiers’ feelings as well. Though at first glance this photo seems somewhat impersonal, all the layers to the soldiers’ predicament make the image a very touching one.