Peter Ota and Betty Hutchinson

Peter Ota was a Japanese American, and his story encompassed the American government's treatment of Japanese during the war. His fatehr was arrested immediately following Pearl Harbor, and his mother contracted tuberculosis, leaving the children ages only 15 and 12 to fend for themselves in the world.When Peter Ota's father was arrested, he was not ashamed of his actions, because the Japanese have a culture of "Gaman" which means to preserve, and not to react. This was shown as Peter Ota's father didn't react to the fact that his own government took all that he had been working for in his life, and kept on trying to live. Peter's mother, however, was not as strong as Peter described her as being ashamed of your culture. Peter likened that to being "worse than death." This was especially awful for Peter Ota, because when he turned 18 he enlisted for the draft and was eventually drafted into the reserve. He was going to end up fighting for the nation that had imprisioned his whole family. Fortunately, the war ended before Peter was sent into service in Europe. Peter felt thathe had to prove himself, and later in his life, he felt so ashamed of his Japanese culture, that he eventually moved to a white suburb and nearly abandoned his Japanese heritage.



Betty Hutchinson was a nurse during World War 2, she volunteered with the Red Cross and witnessed the horrors of World War 2. Her perspective was drastically different from other women who were working in the factoreis. She saw first hand, the awful things that happened to the men in the war, and has to live with the awful things that she saw. It was all very depressing for her, all the sadness and the tragedies that these men faced. And despite one and a half years of service she said " I can't say I ever really became used to it" And the soldiers "never talked of the horrors". Then she says she disagrees with the romancing of war. She says that war is awful, and that it is impossible to capture the horrors of war.

Both these stories describe the dark sides of war, and how it is hard to cope with the tragedies of war. Although these two people weren't soldiers, they were still affectd by the war, and shows how war affects more people than are actually fighting in the war.