Desensitized to the Horrors

“We are all getting used to the weather and dust and beginning to think that it isn’t such a bad place after all.” -Fusa Tsumagari in her letter to Miss Breed, 1942

This quote came up in class last Thursday, and I’d like to highlight it again. It seems like an awfully mundane quote from afar, but the context makes it interesting. This comment of Fusa’s is about her and all the others at the internment camp in Poston, Arizona. These camps homed thousands upon thousands of Japanese Americans within small quarters–the camp in Poston held nearly 18 thousand people at one time. Resources were scarce; many lacked access to tables, chairs, buckets, mops, etc. Temperatures were extreme, their cots and living quarters were uncomfortable, and basic nutrition was difficult. Diseases spread like wildfire in the cramped conditions. Many died, and others–young and old–held the grief of their deaths. 

So it’s probably no surprise if your mind immediately jumps to “How could these people live in such conditions?” These camps seemed uncomfortable, stressful, and harmful to the mind and body. No one would want to live in such a desolate place. This makes Fusa’s statement seem like a lie to cover up her suffering, something to prevent Miss Breed from worrying too much. Surely, no one could adjust to living that way.

However, I want to analyze this quote based on it being somewhat truthful. It’s hasty to generalize that everyone is warming up to indefinite incarceration, but not to assume that some people are since prolonged exposure to a topic or experience can desensitize you, even if it is oppressive or horrific. 

Let’s delve into this idea by comparing internment camps to something we’re all familiar with: the COVID-19 pandemic. While quarantine was by no means as oppressive or uncomfortable as the camps, they shared certain qualities that made them horrific. Resources became scarce and overpriced; the spread of disease was rampant; people were forced to stay in places for indeterminable amounts of time. In the initial stages of the pandemic, people were terrified by the speed of the spread and death toll. Many did their part to prevent the spread, masking up and keeping their distance from the public.

After some time, the fear associated with COVID-19 dissipated. The death toll was high, and the infectivity of COVID hadn’t lowered, yet many stores and businesses reopened, people returned to work and school, and mask-wearing became optional. Even today, COVID-19 is still spreading, yet we aren’t fussing over it as much as before. An observational study conducted by Hannah R. Stevens et al. states, “The level of anxiety in users’ tweets increased sharply in response to article anxiety early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, but as the casualty count climbed, news articles seemingly lost their ability to elicit anxiety among readers.” How come? Well, the same study continues: “Desensitization offers an explanation for why the increased threat is not eliciting widespread behavioral compliance with guidance from public health officials.” As time passed, COVID-19 became old news, numbing society to the tragedies caused by the pandemic. Similar desensitization likely occurred to the Japanese Americans within the internment camps.

Consider the implications of this desensitization: some Japanese Americans may have accepted these camps to be their new way of life instead of a great act of bigotry. To recall what Professor Hertel said in class last Thursday, some considered their incarceration to be a safe haven from discrimination, even though it is what led them to this fate. They became so desensitized to their oppression that they began to welcome it. To those familiar with the Allegory of the Cave by Plato, it is as if these people had been imprisoned in the cave of shadows. Yet, unlike those born in this cave, these people knew the truth of the outside world and decided, on their own free will, to forget that truth. 

It’s an occurrence that isn’t unique to just the imprisoned Japanese Americans. In Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from Birmingham Jail, he mentions a group “made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of ‘somebodyness’ that they have adjusted to segregation.” Desensitization to oppression is a sign that one has given up. By failing to care, one proves that there is no reason to care, no reason to solve an issue, no reason to fight. That is how oppression wins.

I like to think that every one of the children in these letters had hope. Some of you may feel that their letters are a mask covering the true despair deep within them. I say otherwise. Within their words of good news, they had hope. Within their complaints and inconveniences, they had hope. Within their cries against their injustices, they had hope. To hope is to smile despite the hardships. To hope to yearn for the end of torment. To hope is to rage against discrimination. To be comfortable where you are, to find solace in the hell the world forced upon you, that is when you’ve lost all hope.