West Seattle schools: ‘Living history lesson’ at Explorer West

Amy French from Explorer West Middle School (WSB sponsor) shares the story of a “living history lesson” this week: Suma Yagi is an EW student’s great-aunt, and visited the 7th-grade American History classes to read her poetry and talk about what she went through during the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans 70 years ago. Amy writes:

When Suma was 14 and a freshman at Garfield High School, war broke out with Japan and President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of Japanese Americans across the Pacific coast with Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. After having eight days to pack-up and leave their Central District home, her American-born family faced internment for over three years at two camps.

After her family was released, she moved on with her life as a high school student and her family rarely mentioned their time in the internment camps. Only when Suma was in her sixties and taking a writing class, did she start to capture and share these stories. Suma finished each classroom session by answering a series of questions that the students had prepared. The Explorer West 7th graders had been studying WWII and had completed some background reading on the internment.

The Explorer West community respectfully thanks Suma for so graciously sharing her living history with the 7th grade students.

There’s more about her story and her visit on the school’s website.

Westside March 29, 2012 (12:37 pm)

This kind of thing is so important. Those kids will never forget what they learned this week. Good for the school for bringing her in and gratitude to Suma for speaking about her difficult experience so future generations can learn from the mistakes of the past.

Jim P. March 29, 2012 (2:26 pm)

Brilliant! This sort of project is one of the most worthwhile means of showing real history that I can imagine.

Words on paper are dry and often lack real power to engage the mind of children. Words from someone who can genuinely say “I was *there* and this happened to *me*” are precious gems.

I would have loved to be sitting there to hear her talk, to share this link with our past so we do not forget the wrong we did.

I salute whoever arranged this, this is most excellent teaching.

Robert L. Seward March 29, 2012 (3:35 pm)

There are also a lot of stories about how poorly German immigrants were treated during WW2. There were German Americans in the U.S. military while their parents wee also locked in internment camps. Jimmy Doolittle’s bombardier, a man named Braemer was dropping bombs over Tokyo while his father sat in an internment camp.

Baseball great Joe DiMaggio’s father was one of the thousands of Italian immigrants forced to evacuate the West Coast a la Executive Order 9066. My link will take you to a site dedicated to how the internment affected German Americans. That part of the story must not be forgotten.

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