That Damned Fence
Anonymous
page 745
The work That Damned Fence is all about the fences in the internment camps and how they shut the Japanese-American people in them from all the outside life. It talks about how everyday they longed to be out and their loyalty and sacrifice made in patriotism by staying in the camps. It says, "But we're here because we happen to be Japs. We love life, and our country best, our misfortune to be here in the west, to keep us penned behind that DAMNED FENCE, is someone's notion of NATIONAL DEFENSE!" (page 745) Here it states that those in the camps could have been doing something more to help with the country like serving in the military, sacrificing their lives but rather, they were forced to be penned in not doing anything based on the notion of the country's security.
I think that this poem really showed how a lot of the people in the camps probably felt. That they could be actually doing something to help but because they were behind the fence, they couldn't. They saw it as denial and disassociation from everybody else simply because of the ethnicity they happened to be. If the country would have looked past that, I think things could have resolved a lot quicker and the Nation would be less scared by its racial biassed past, today.
