"Cats of Mirikitani" Film

The film “ The Cats of Mirikitani,” showed me how we truly do not know what a person has been through in their life until we get to know them. Jimmy Mirikitani may have just seemed like a struggling artist/ homeless person to anyone just walking down the street, but to Linda Hattendorf there was more to him. Linda knew right away that there was more to Jimmy, there was a story that was worth discovering. After the 9/11 attack Linda could not bear to leave Jimmy on the streets alone, so she took him in. Not only was it an opportunity to help someone who needed it but it was also an opportunity to unravel an inspiring story. For Jimmy the 9/11 attacks was history repeating itself, humans always feeling the need to go to war. Jimmy was a Japanese-American who experienced and lived through the Japanese American war. His art consisted of the camp, the war and cats because a boy who constantly followed him in the camp loved cats so he would draw them for him.

Painting for him gave him a sense of release; he turned his hurt into art, along with his memories and experiences. Aside from what he had been through he used art as an escape and was still hopeful about life. All of Jimmy’s siblings aside from one, died in World War II. It was amazing to see that a man that had went through so much in his life and has experienced racial discrimination chose to tell his story through the beauty of art. There are those who let what they have been through in life affect there future but Jimmy never did, judging off of his personality you wouldn’t think Jimmy had gone through so much. In the beginning of the film we see the hurt behind Jimmy’s eyes, we see the obvious and well-deserved resentment he has against America. But in the end of the film you can notice almost a weight being lifted.

"Fictive Fragments of A Father & Son" by David Mura

This story is about a son who with time learns that his father has practically abandoned his Japanese roots. The father has become fully submerged in the American culture. As the story goes on there is a mention of the father being proud to be an American, however, in no moment was there a mention of the father being proud to be Japanese. The fact that Mura's father has completely abandoned his culture could be the result of the scorn his culture may have received in the past. At one point the Japanese-American were considered less than African-Americans. Mura's father was obviously ashamed of his ethnic background and made the decision to slowly abandon his roots completely. 

Although some people may find it unfair to Mura for Mura's father to have abandoned his Japanese roots; I can honestly understand his father's reasons. It has always been hard and is still till this day hard for immigrants to have the same opportunities as Americans. Or to say in the most bluntest manner; it is hard for immigrants to have the same opportunities as "whites." Mura's father had to work ten times harder to get to where he is just because of his cultural background, he had to adopt the American ways and in a sense be more American than the Americans. Therefore the father, throughout his life converted himself by changing his name, changing his beliefs and converting to Christianity. Mura's father’s decision to become a Christian gave him a sense of fitting in with the American way of life. What he was escaping from was the burdens that had shaped his parents or his fathers life. 

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” ― Oscar Wilde