Why Do North Americans Join World War II?

Living in San Francisco with my mother and father was all I had ever known. There were several folks from Asia at my school and I even had classes with a few of them. My father woke me up and told me to come with him to the neighbor’s house since they had a radio. The Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor and the world was now a different place. While the war had been active in Europe for some time it seemed so far away and our lives were unaffected by the battles described in the newspaper and on the radio.
While there were no Japanese living in our neighborhood there was a lot of talk about a possible threat and the newspaper was referring to people from Germany, Italy and Japan as “Enemy Aliens” (Davies, 1942). In school there had never been an issue over loyalty to America or even questions to the other nationalities as to their position on the war. Collecting and relocating the Japanese seemed to be a very fast and deliberate act being performed by the military, but as I observed it seemed that the Italians and Germans were not enduring the same level of relocation. Many
I have spoken with my parents but they want me to finish school first. I am not afraid to fight and defend my country and the freedoms of others. It has been said that the Germans are killing many people just because they are Jewish and that is not right (Johnson, 2012). What the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor must be avenged and the sooner I can join the Army the better. The government had passed the draft and young men were signing up by the hundreds. Our family time had started to change since mom had gotten a job at a factory making clothes for soldiers going to war. Mom had never had a job and dad was gone all the time meeting with folks about building a possible coast defense system. Our family life had changed just as the world around us had