While reading the graphic novel They Called Us Enemies, I noticed several differences between the parent’s and children’s reactions to being forced to leave their homes. On panel #32, for instance, George Takei’s family was told to move and sleep in a horse barn for the time being, which was filled with dirty hay and typically smelled of horse poop. Although George’s parents seemed devastated, the emotions on their faces turned hesitant when a young George said, “We get to sleep where the horses slept! Fun!” George Takei now looks back on this memory and states that as a child, he and his brother couldn’t grasp the intensity of the situation the same as their parents did. A similar incident happened during the family’s train ride to a new concentration camp, on panel #38, when George asked his father where they were going. He could only respond with, “We are going on a vacation, a long vacation to a faraway place called Arkansas.” However, around the family, several others were crying and sobbing, while George and his brother, Henry, couldn’t understand why they were shedding tears. To them, it didn’t make sense because they were going on a vacation, but to the parents and adults, they knew that the ride was not a vacation, but just another road to a concentration camp, away from home.

We can see this kind of similar difference in how these situations are viewed through the change of age in the Play Mountain podcast. In his museum, Isamu Noguchi created Play Mountain, which he introduced as “conceived as a way of building on a city block in New York a mountain, which would, in fact, be an enhanced area for children’s play.” To adults, it may seem like nothing more than a simple mountain with some twists and turns. To children, however, it would be conceived as something amazing, beyond their imagination. It was everything they could have hoped for. The view between adults and children seems to be very different when the children are still at a young age. While our parents worry over what should usually be worried about, children see it as a chance to explore something they’ve never seen before. Although in some cases this may be dangerous, it’s good that they still have a big imagination in their heads for imagination and play, so they can see the world in light for their parents in dark times.