The Fervor

by Alma Katsu

America is experiencing a wave of senseless violence against Asian Americans that can’t help but remind one of the internment of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor, when policy makers moved to deny tens of thousands of American citizens their rights and caused massive loss of freedom and property. Countless lives were wrecked because those in charge caved to a popular pressure without basis in fact, that was driven purely by emotion. Because policy makers and civic leaders didn’t do what they knew in their hearts and heads was right. I know the story of the internment well because it’s part of my history. My mother is Japanese, and my in-laws’ entire family were interned during the war. I grew up listening to stories of how my mother was ill-treated when she came to live in America with my father. She had been a child during the war and could hardly be blamed for decisions made by the men in charge, but that didn’t make any difference to the people who called her names, mistreated and threatened her. The ugly brutality she suffered at their hands scarred her for life.