Donald Ginn was looking for a class project that the students in the AP History class he teaches at Grossmont High could get involved in after they finished their testing for the year.<\/p>\n
Ginn was put in touch with La Mesa Historical Society president James Newland who had started research on Japanese-American students from Grossmont who were interned during WWII. The resulting project is an exhibit that is now on display at the McKinney House Museum through September.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The students] did an amazing job,\u201d Newland said. \u201cEach team took up a person or two and researched what happened to them, what their story was. As a professional historian I really was amazed at how the level they went to try and learn.\u201d<\/p>\n Through her research, AP History student Antonina Contreras learned about the life of Kyoko Kimura.<\/p>\n \u201cI know with Kyoko, she was well-liked at school,\u201d Contreras said. \u201cThere was no sense of discrimination around her [at school.]\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the students lived normal teenage lives before they were sent to internment camps, which makes their stories \u201ca tough part of history \u2026 but really important to understand,\u201d Newland said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a community that, even though it was fairly small in overall numbers, it was integrated into this community,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of the gentlemen you will find [in the exhibit] was the quarterback of the football team, who luckily had already enlisted or he probably would have been interned with the rest of his family.\u201d<\/p>\n Jacob Niskey researched a Japanese-American student named Thomas Hoshimoto who was interned before he also enlisted in the military.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of Japanese-Americans who were interned enlisted to prove their sense of nationalism \u2014 prove they were part of the country, that they were American,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Through his research, Niskey learned that Hoshimoto was a Boy Scout and while he was interned, he was part of a group of young Japanese-Americans that protected a flagpole that hung the U.S. flag from being knocked over during a riot at Manzanar.<\/p>\n In addition to learning about the interned students, the students in Ginn\u2019s class learned some valuable research skills.<\/p>\n Aljosa Nanusevic and his group had a difficult time researching Shigeru Sugaya.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was loosely mentioned in one document but mostly he was listed in only some marriage surveys and, of course, the internment documents,\u201d Nanusevic said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of sad that that\u2019s the only thing we could get on him \u2014 that he\u2019s just kind of a digit on a bunch of paperwork.\u201d<\/p>\n Nanusevic\u2019s group couldn\u2019t find family members but did eventually find a 95-year-old woman to interview, who knew Sugaya and was also interned, and members were able to write Sugaya\u2019s story from that.<\/p>\n Brian Cushman and Luke Anderson had an even more difficult time researching Shigeru\u2019s brother Yoshi Sugaya. The only person they could find to interview wasn\u2019t interested in talking with them, so they resorted to bribery. Cushman said they found out the relative of Sugaya had unclaimed money using internet research and offered to disclose how to claim in exchange for an interview.<\/p>\n \u201cThis person was being completely adamant, saying, \u2018No I don\u2019t want to talk to you. I don\u2019t want to talk about that,\u2019\u201d Cushman said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could have been a cultural shyness,\u201d Anderson added. \u201cIn their culture, maybe you just don\u2019t discuss things like that that have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Ginn said he thinks the students had different challenges doing the assignment and also took away different lessons. \u201cI don\u2019t know if there was one general common experience,\u201d he said. \u201cI think each person had a unique circumstance.\u201d<\/p>\n But there was one common question the students asked themselves. Could history repeat itself?<\/p>\n Nanusevic thinks it might, especially with some of the rhetoric happening in politics from candidates like Donald Trump.<\/p>\n![\"Japanese](\"https:\/\/lamesacourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Japanese-internment1webtop.jpg\")
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