The human mind is a curious object, and one that is certainly not infallible. The way that it develops through adolescence, and the stimuli it faces throughout growth helps to shape it, thus shaping the way a person thinks, acts, talks, and more. Memory especially, is formed by doing. Although this may seem like common knowledge, the more people tend to do things, the better they remember how to do them. This works by forging new neural networks, and linking past knowledge to understand new concepts.

One thing that really stood out to me in They Called us Enemy is the way that the characters looked when put into the camps. The forlorn expressions on their face as they realized that everything that they were working for, and everything that they wanted to do was taken away from them felt extremely similar to Noguchi’s experience where he was taken away into a concentration camp. There, he was hated from both sides. His fellow Japanese-American citizens despised him because he got “special” treatment from the guards, and the guards disliked him because of who he was. A Japanese-American. The way he described his experience there was similar to the child’s expression in the graphic novel, because just like the child, Noguchi wanted to return to where he felt safe. He wanted to return to Play Mountain, the project that he dumped massive amounts of time into.

Comics or Graphic Novels in and of themselves have a remarkable simplicity to them. They seem so simple, and so easy to make. But as stated in the Understanding Comics podcast by Scott McCloud, these forms of art are anything but simple.

“Every panel that is drawn in a comic book is painstakingly drawn in a way that the author can bring to life it’s creation. Everything must be perfect.” ~Scott McCloud

And its true. What we take for granted is hours of work, and hours of thinking for a graphic novel designer. From the amount of panels, to the angles of the panels, to the actual drawings and story within those panels. Every single thing drawn on a graphic novel is the product of countless hours of thought in order to give the reader the best experience possible.