Brief Comparison Of Sumi Utsushigawa And Eiserloh

World War II is known as one of the most devastating wars to plague the earth. Nations from all over the world committed unspeakable acts towards their supposed enemies, and while nothing can compare to the atrocities of the Holocaust, the United States did not emerge from the war with their hands clean. Throughout the war, the United States government interned and even deported “enemy aliens” of German, Italian, and Japanese heritage. Though this practice occasionally proved fruitful, many of its victims were American born children of immigrants and therefore U.S. citizens. In her book, The Train to Crystal City, Jan Jarboe Russell details the experience of two young girls, Sumi Utsushigawa and Ingrid Eiserloh, both American born children

Both lost their fathers. Both bounced from internment camp to internment camp. Both experienced rejection from their homeland then forced to relocate to a foreign one. Both faced uncertainty in the native land of their parents. Both faced hunger and even starvation once they arrived in their parent’s native land from a scarcity of resources and income. While the two girls’ lives reflected one another, they also experienced vast differences. For instance, after her father’s arrest, Ingrid’s neighbors outcasted her and her family while Sumi, who lived in a predominantly Japanese neighborhood, shared the same fate as many of her neighbors. Additionally, Ingrid, who dropped out of school shortly after her father’s arrest and did not attend school in Germany, never graduated high school whereas Sumi eventually went on to chiropractic schooling in the United States. Ultimately, both Ingrid and Sumi found their way back to the United States, where they tried to recreate a semblance of pre-World War II normalcy. Though neither ever recovered from the psychological effects of their experiences, both established a life and

Ingrid suffered more in Germany than she ever had in America. While Sumi prospered and helped keep her family afloat, her relationship with her parents became strained, and she longed for her old life in Los Angeles. After a soldier raped her in Germany in 1945, Ingrid decided to ask her parents to help her return to the United States. She experienced little reluctance from her parents and found passage by the summer of 1947. That same summer, Sumi asked her father to help with her return as well, expecting resistance but finding none, and found her way back to the United States by the end of the summer as well. Once re-established in America, both girls married men who had served in the military on the side of the Americans and built families. Even though neither marriage proved fruitful, as Ingrid divorced her husband after having children and Sumi’s husband died of a heart attack at a relatively young age, both had at least a taste of happiness, a taste of the American dream, in the country of their birth. Had either girl decided to stay in the native home of their parents, they may have found a similar happiness, but the memory of their simple life in America, the country of their birth, the country they knew as home, would have haunted them the rest of their lives and potentially have made them restless and caused more problems than if they had