I am fascinated by the combination of the World War II stories of Peter Ota and Betty Basye Hutchison because they had utterly different experiences, yet they regarded the war in the same manner to their kids. Peter Ota and Betty Hutchison both had the war change their lives forever. Peter’s ethnicity forced involvement, while Betty’s social circle encouraged involvement. Their experiences are completely different because Peter’s change was forced by the government while Betty could not wait to get involved.
Peter’s father was an honest, hard-working man living the American dream who was sent to jail after the attack at Pearl Harbor because he was Japanese. His mom then became too ill to move because of the shame she felt in seeing her husband in prison clothes. At age 15 it was just Peter and his 12 year old sister. This was an American family who did not choose to have their lives altered because of the war. In April 1942, Peter and his sister were sent to the internment camp at Santa Anita because they were Nisei. They could only take what they could carry and lost all privacy. Their father was later brought to this camp like cattle and they soon after were sent to a new camp in Colorado that was like a prison. Peter’s father never showed any anger, but he was a different person. Peter was sent out in jobs so he was only in the camp for a year. He joined the war effort to escape the horrors of the camps not because he wanted to get involved. He summarizes his war experience, “Here I am being drafted into the army, and my father and sister are in a concentration camp waiting for the war to end”. His experience was very ironic and showed that he was involved in the war involuntarily.
Betty Basye Hutchinson immediately knew she was going to involve herself and the war and do what she could to help the war effort. She became a nurse because it was the fastest thing she could do to help the boys. Betty really wanted to have something to do with war which meant should was willing to end the life she had known just a few months before. The glamour of the war was appealing to her. Everyone she knew was involved in the war, so she wanted to do something. Betty’s brother served on a tanker, her schoolmates were out there losing their lives, and her fiancé joined the marines. Her social circle or environment encouraged one to do whatever they could for the war effort. She was an American who was glad to join in, while others like Peter were forced to join in.
Betty and Peter both ended up living in suburbia and raised their kids in similar manners. They had oppositional experiences during the war for both being American. I am intrigued that the both ended up living such similar lives. Peter explains his philosophy, “My children were denied a lot of the history of what happened. If you think of all those forty years of silence, I think this stems from another Japanese characteristic: when shame is put on you, you try to hide it.” And Betty explains her similar philosophy, “That’s the way we lived in suburbia, raising our children, not telling them about war…You wouldn’t fill your children full of these horror stories, would you?”. They ended up living similar lives but for completely different reasons. Peter wanted to shield his children from the shame that was thrust upon him, while Betty did not want them to know of the horrors she willingly was a part of.
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