Throughout history, people have been stereotyped based on their skin color and origins. Those with similar backgrounds to one that committed a crime or has done something to hurt society were also seen as criminals and were outlawed. Using the graphic novel They Called Us Enemy as an example, Japanese-Americans were seen as untrustworthy and were questioned of their loyalty following the event of Pearl Harbor. But how does one person represent an entire community and race?

In They Called Us Enemy, George Takei and his family, along with many other Japanese-Americans, were forced to move to incarceration camps due to the Executive Order 9066 passed by President Franklin Roosevelt. Japanese-Americans were now seen as enemies and aliens of the United States because of this order as people believed they were the reason for the destruction of Pearl Harbor. Their citizenship was practically stripped away from them and their hard work diminished as they began to live in putrid horse stalls. After being loaded into trains, they had tags like cattle for identification which was such a dehumanizing act, especially when guards were posted in the trains as if they went against the law.

As shown in the podcast, Play Mountain, Noguchi designed several different sculptures and attempted to make a unique playground which was what he called a “play mountain”. After the event of Pearl Harbor, Noguchi began to work with John Collier to design and build incarceration camps for the displaced Japanese-Americans. They thought of this as a way to make a utopian society and worked to make a variety of public services and rows of homes in one area, thinking they were making a nice place to live. After voluntarily visiting and living in a concentration camp himself, Noguchi realized that it was run like a prison camp with his ideas being disregarded. Since Noguchi was Japanese-American himself, he was also seen as a prisoner and was unable to leave the camp despite all of his hard work to design and make it a better place.

In the articles “We Were Still The Enemy” and “We Still Haven’t Learned From This“, stories of Japanese-Americans during World War II and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor are shared. Like George Takei and his family, several others were forced out of their homes and had to be temporarily housed in horse stalls and later in concentration camps. These articles accentuate the importance of this history and how knowing the living conditions of the Japanese-American citizens at the time could prevent similar incidents from happening in the future. Furthermore, the Youtube video attached below also shows the perspective of a Japanese-American whose life had changed due to of the Executive Order 9066. Aki, who has always thought of herself as American and nothing else, had to live in incarceration camps and was outlawed even by her own teacher.

Tracing back to the question of whether or not one person represents all, people’s intentions and personalities should not be based on something that is uncontrollable in their own hands. Although this is an obvious answer, society has been drawn towards characterizing people depending on their origins, as seen in the examples above on the Japanese-Americans after the event of Pearl Harbor. You may be wondering, why would anyone choose to do this when it’s clearly the wrong answer? The answer is: it’s the easy and lazy way out. Society picks this option as an alternative because of how easy it is to hate and how simple it is to “judge a book by its cover” rather than truly learning about and understanding someone. However, this can be prevented in the future as it can be controlled by us even though we cannot go back in time and right every wrong. Learning about this history allows us to realize how difficult lives were from social beliefs and how this could be put to a stop in the future, where everyone belongs and nobody is outlawed.