Activity: Role Playing 

Students will imagine returning to the original neighborhood from which they were forced to move. They experience hostility or sympathy and friendship.

Situation: Three years after their internment, Japanese-Americans were allowed to return to the West Coast, where they often faced signs that told them to "go back where they came from" or graffiti telling them they were not welcome. Someone else often occupied their former house and was reluctant to leave. But many times, kind and generous people offered their homes or helped them to find one and to find jobs.

Procedure: Two volunteers will enact the following drama. The first student is occupying the second student's desk, while the second student had gone to another room on the teacher's orders. He/she has returned.

Student #1: I have come back. This is my seat. Please give it back to me.

Student #2: No, this is my seat now. If you liked it so much, why did you leave?

Student #1: I had to. The teacher told me to.

Student #2: What for? 

Student #1: I don't know.

Student #2: Didn't you ask?

Student #1: No, I just did what she told me to do. So please give it back to me.

Student #2: Well, I'll have to think about it.

Ask the students the following questions:

1. Do you think Student #1 should have his/her seat back? Why?

2. Do you think Student #2 will give up his/her seat? Why?

3. Do you think there is a way to work this out?

4. How do you think Student #1 felt when he/she was not allowed to have his/her desk back?

5. How would you feel if you were Student #2? 

Homework:

1. Write “The Japanese-American Internment and Relocation Experience” in a circle. Web all the ideas, thoughts, feelings, and emotions that come to mind from this simulation and the entire unit we have explored.

2. Using the syllable pattern of 5,7,5, write an old form of Japanese poetry called haiku. Be sure to reflect on the ideas you have webbed above.

3. Mount your poem onto construction paper.

4. Illustrate the rest of the paper with pictures representing the Japanese-American experience. You may draw these pictures or find them on the Internet (the NJDH website will be a valuable source of pictures).

5. View this website for haiku examples.