Supporting Question 2: Japanese American Life in Incarceration Camps

Before students begin exploring the second supporting question, What was life like for Japanese Americans during incarceration?, introduce an overview of Japanese American incarceration for students to explore using the K-W-L teaching strategy. 

Have students draw a blank, three-column K-W-L chart in their journals. Also create a blank class K-W-L chart on the board or a piece of chart paper. Add “Japanese American Incarceration” to the class chart, and have students copy the same into their journals.

Pass out the reading The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II. Read the handout aloud as a class. Then use the questions below to ensure student comprehension of the handout. While you record basic facts in the “Know” column on the class K-W-L chart, students can record them in the same column in their journals:

• Why did the US government make the decision to incarcerate Japanese Americans? What factors influenced that decision? 
• How did the process of incarcerating Japanese Americans unfold? 
• Where were the incarceration camps located? 
• What was the experience of incarceration like for Japanese Americans? 
• How and why did incarceration end? 

Have students take a few minutes to add questions that the reading sparks for them about Japanese American incarceration to the “Want to Know” column of their K-W-L charts. Use the Think, Pair, Share strategy to have students share their questions, first with a partner and then with the entire class. Encourage students to add more questions to the “W” column of the K-W-L chart as the inquiry progresses.

The next activity orients students to the geography of the incarceration camps and affords them the opportunity to hear a survivor’s poem about the experience of incarceration. Give each student a copy of the Map of Japanese American Incarceration Camps and the “Concentration Constellation” reading, which features a poem by Lawson Fusao Inada. Explain that Lawson Fusao Inada spent the war in an incarceration camp. 

Read the poem aloud as a class. As students read about the camps described in the poem, ask them to draw a line on the map connecting each camp to the one previously mentioned. 

Then have students break into groups of two or three for a small-group discussion. Before students begin their discussion, remind them that a scar can be a mark left after an injury has healed or a lingering sign of damage or injury. Then share the following questions for students to discuss: 

1. Why does Inada believe that the camps are “a jagged scar, massive, on the massive landscape” of the United States? 
2. Is the scar a reminder of a wound that has healed or a lingering sign of damage?
3. To what extent do you agree with Inada’s analysis? 

After students are finished discussing in their small groups, reconvene as a class and ask a few volunteers to share out some takeaways from their discussion.

Build on students’ learning by facilitating a gallery walk of various sources (mostly photographs) depicting the experience of incarceration for Japanese Americans. Explain the Gallery Walk teaching strategy to students and pass out the handout Analysis of Snapshots of Japanese American Incarceration. As students examine the sources you’ve displayed around the room from Snapshots of Japanese American Incarceration, they should be recording words that describe their observations of incarceration in the column marked “Observations.”

Once students have explored all the sources and recorded their observations, or after about ten minutes, ask them to return to their seats. Then allow students an additional ten minutes to record their questions and make connections in response to the images in the columns marked “Questions” and “Connections.” 

Break the class into groups of three students. Have each student share at least one connection and discuss one question with their classmates. 

Finally, reconvene as a class and ask students to discuss their takeaways from the Gallery Walk activity by discussing the following questions:

• What did you learn from the Gallery Walk activity about the conditions in the incarceration camps? Did anything surprise you? 
• What was daily life like for those who were incarcerated? What challenges did they face, and how did they respond to those challenges?
• How did incarcerees attempt to restore a sense of dignity and/or normalcy to their lives in the camps? Why do you think this was important to the incarcerees?

To answer the supporting question, What was life like for Japanese Americans during incarceration?, have students return to the K-W-L charts they created during Day 1. Ask students to record at least three new understandings that they have about Japanese American incarceration to the “L” column of their K-W-L charts.