Lesson 31: Seen and Unseen, Part 15

Display the Essential Question: How can readers evaluate words and images for accuracy, perspective, and ethical use? Students will use the Turn-and-Talk routine to discuss the following prompt. Invite volunteers to share their observations with the whole class as time permits.

Turn and Talk

Say these Directions: Take a moment to think about the following prompt, then use the Turn and Talk routine to discuss your responses with a partner. You should consider emotional impact, perspective and bias, and differences in what is emphasized or omitted, in your discussion.

• Ask: When you read multiple accounts of the same event, how do your impressions change? What patterns or differences do you notice?

  • Reading multiple accounts of the same event can show me that no two people experience events in exactly the same way. For example, when we read the accounts of forced removal, we get one piece of testimony from the point of view of a child and one from an adult’s perspective. Amy Iwasaki, who was six at the time, thought that Japanese Americans were being sent away as punishment for something they had done (p. 29), while the unnamed young man on p. 25 emphasized the indignity of being labeled with numbers.

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: Today we will compare two or three survivor sequences from Seen and Unseen to investigate patterns. Keep in mind the points you made during the Turn-and-Talk discussion about tone, perspective, and emphasis of different sources.

Example/Non-Example

Say these Directions: Remember that you have previously encountered the word discrimination. Work with a partner to determine whether the following scenarios are examples or non-examples of the target word.

Target word: discrimination 

• Introduce the Activity: Present each scenario orally and/or project on a board. 

• Ask: What does the word discrimination mean?

• Discuss Scenarios: Ask students to discuss with a partner to explain why each scenario is an example or a non-example of discrimination. 

• Ask: Is this an example or non-example of discrimination? Why? 

Share Student Thinking: Invite groups to share their examples and non-examples. As students share their thinking, prompt students to share their rationale and explain their connections. For example: 

• Ask: Why is this first scenario, “people could not buy land in California…” an example of discrimination but this second scenario, “people who buy land in California must follow rules…” is not?

  • The first is discrimination because it affects people based on their country of origin. The second is not because it is a rule that everybody has to follow, regardless of where they are from.

• Ask: What makes discrimination different from the rules and restrictions described in the non-examples?

  • Discrimination involves treating people unfairly based on their membership in a group, such as their race or gender. In the crime non-example, anyone who commits the crime is liable to go to prison; the law presumably applies to everyone. In the factory non-example, it is not unfair to require special training before people are exposed to workplace hazards. However, if the training were only available to people of a certain race or gender, then it would likely be an example of discrimination.

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: As we continue to explore the testimony of Japanese American incarceration survivors, it is important to remember the attitudes and behaviors that allowed for such an injustice to take place. We should be alert to how Japanese-Americans experienced discrimination not only during, but before and after their imprisonment.

Select two survivor sequences (three to four pages each) from Seen and Unseen to briefly compare using the Think-Aloud Modeling routine. Share your thinking with students in response to the prompts.

Part A: Model Sequence Comparison (RI.7.6, RI.7.7, RI.7.9) (10 minutes)

Say these Directions: Follow along as I model how to compare a sequence, and record my findings in a Comparing Multiple Sources Graphic Organizer.

• Ask: How do the authors place testimony from survivors relative to photos?

  • Say: I see that the quote from Taira Fukushima [p. 97] is placed at the bottom right of a spread that contains several smiling portraits of prisoners at Manzanar.)

• Ask: How do shifts in pacing, sentence length, or visual framing affect your understanding?

  • Say: Because this quote appears after these portraits, it seems like it is meant to summarize what is happening in the portraits—that they show something that is “not necessarily true” or at least doesn’t tell the full story about life in the prison camp.)

• Ask: What is left unsaid or unseen between sequences?

  • Say: From this sequence alone, we would be left to wonder what is “true” about life at Manzanar that did not make it into the photos. If the smiling portraits leave out important truths, where are those truths to be found in the images or text?)

• Ask: How do the sequences reinforce or contrast with one another?

  • Say: Let me compare the sequence that quotes Fukushima with the earlier pages [pp. 52–55] surrounding Toyo Miyatake’s wish to “record everything.” In these earlier pages, I see why so much about Manzanar could not make it into photographs. He was working in secret, and the process he had to follow was extremely complex according to the diagrams. Meanwhile, the other two photographers were surveilled by guards and had to limit what they photographed.

Part B: Compare Sequences (RI.7.6, RI.7.7, R.7.9) (20 minutes)

Say these Directions: Now you will work in small groups to annotate two assigned survivor sequences using the Comparing Multiple Sources graphic organizer. Your annotations should consider:

• 1. Differences in emotional tone.

  2. Variations in perspective: who is speaking, who is visible.

  3. Structural choices: order, placement, interactions of text and visuals.

  4. Any gaps or omissions they notice.

  5. Connections to the Essential Question.

Once students have completed their written annotations, have pairs/groups discuss the following questions:

• Ask: Which sequence felt more personal, more public, or more distant?

  • Archie Miyatake’s bitterness at the loyalty questionnaire (p. 67) felt very personal to me. I would be extremely resentful if someone locked my family up and then asked for my help—especially if they tried to intimidate me into helping. The sequence that included Sadae Takizawa’s quote about melancholy (p. 35) felt more distant to me because it seemed to apply to everyone at the camp.

• Ask: How does reading multiple stories together change your understanding of daily life in the camps?

  • Reading Takizawa’s and Miyatake’s stories together shows me that people had every reason to feel anxious during their time in the camps. Even when they were already confined and under armed guard, they were asked questions to try to winnow out “disloyal” prisoners.

• Ask: What responsibilities do we have when interpreting multiple accounts?

  • One major responsibility is to remember that different people had different experiences, even under a system that tried to treat them as “all the same.” For example, Archie Miyatake was a “no-yes,” someone who swore allegiance to the U.S. but didn’t agree to serve in the armed forces. His experience was certainly different from the “no-nos” who were removed to Tule Lake or from those “yes-yes” respondents who ended up actually serving in the Army during the war.

Reconvene the class and have students share patterns or contrasts noticed across sequences, with emphasis on:

• Emotional impact

• Visible and missing perspectives

• Structural decisions that guide understanding

Have students write a short response to the prompt. Collect the response as formative data.

Quick Write

Say these Directions: Write two to three sentences in response to the following prompt

• Identify one key difference or similarity between the sequences you read. Explain how this choice of structure, detail, or perspective shaped your understanding of the survivor’s experience.

  • Both the story about the Nakamura family (p. 90) and the quote from Taira Fukushima (p. 97) helped me recognize that we need to exercise critical thinking when looking at the Manzanar photos of Ansel Adams. The Nakamura family’s camp housing was not as nice as Adams made it out to be through careful choice of perspective, and Fukushima was certainly right that the smiling portrait photos did not tell the whole truth about campers’ feelings.