As I reached the end of the book, surprisingly the first thing that came to mind wasn’t “Wow these things I read were terrible,” but instead how well this story made me feel connected to the problem. Obviously, the things discussed in the novel and tons not discussed that occur in our world are terrible and shouldn’t exist, but this isn’t the first place that my mind went. As I remembered this quote from They called Us Enemy that says, “But for my parents, it was a devastating blow. They had worked so hard to buy a two-bedroom house and raise a family in Los Angeles … now we were crammed into a single, smelly house stall. It was a degrading, humiliating, painful experience,” my mind instead went to the storytelling aspect of the novel and not the story itself. I began to realize how much power a good storyteller has and the ability of a story to impact other people’s lives. I have heard the story of Pearl Harbor many times in my life but I had never really thought about the effects it might have on people indirectly. Throughout the novel, the storytelling really made me think about how these people must’ve been feeling instead of just about how they were treated as a whole. For example, I would have never guessed that some people saw it as a way of supporting their country. But after researching on the internet, I came across a quote by Yuri Kochiyama, which said, “I thought maybe this was the way we could show love for our country, and we should not make too much fuss or noise, we should abide by what they asked of us. I’m a totally different person now than I was back then. I was naive about so many things.” This is an example of one very important thing that storytelling gives us but historical facts don’t, which is the thoughts and feelings of the people stuck in these situations. After feeling like I had a first-row seat to this horrible situation, I was able to find a newfound empathy for these people while also finding gratitude for the fact that I don’t have to face these struggles throughout my daily life. This also made me think about how this could relate to my life and what I discovered is that everybody has a story to tell. Now not all of our stories are going to be as horrifying as these, but we have all experienced pain and obstacles that we’ve had to overcome and that more than likely other people will have to overcome as well. By sharing our stories, we can only hope that not only can we prove that it is possible to get past these things and keep living, but we might also show people the path to beating it and that they are not alone. By taking inspiration from the stories that we’ve read in class and online, I can only hope that someday I’ll be brave enough to share my story.