History professor speaks on Japanese Internment

On Feb. 15, a History professor from Loyola Marymount University visited Samo to give a lecture to students currently enrolled in AP U.S. History (APUSH). The lecture took place in the Humanities Center and focused primarily on the subject of the Japanese-American incarceration that occurred during World War II. The professor, Dr. Curtiss Rooks, is a social scientist with a degree in cultural anthropology who believes that the Japanese-American incarceration of World War II was an extremely important and relevant part of history.  “It is a valuable part of the American story because it has lessons to teach us and lessons for us to learn from so that our lives can be more enriched,” Rooks said. This time in history is important to him because he is Japanese himself, and his mother actually had to endure the hardship of being in an internment camp. Therefore, in his lecture, he addressed the Japanese perspective of being in the internment camps and how that experience affected their lives after the war.  The professor emphasized that for a long time, those who were incarcerated did not talk about their experiences, so it was difficult to understand the Japanese-American outlook on the situation. It was even difficult for him to get his own mother to talk about the hardship she endured. Therefore, to better understand this harrowing time in history, Rooks turned to poets and creative writers to better understand what people dealt with during the time of Japanese-American internment. In fact, during his presentation, he often quoted poets and other writers to enrich APUSH students with more knowledge about the subject. Alisa Boardman (’19), an APUSH student present at the seminar, enjoyed the presentation and the approach Rooks took on the topic of Japanese-American internment. “It was a great opportunity to learn about the different perspectives of World War II,” Boardman said. “Whenever we learn about World War II, it’s always from the American perspective, so to hear insight from the Japanese side was really interesting.” Rooks believes that the Japanese-American incarceration of World War II is an aspect of history that impacts everyone’s story, whether you were alive during that era or not.  “History isn’t something in the past,” Rooks said. “History is something that lives in our present because it sets the template for how it is we come to understand the world around us.” To that end, the seminar was a very rewarding experience for the APUSH students who attended, and should help students better appreciate history and all the lessons it teaches us.