Week 5 Question 9

In the poem In Response to Executive Order 9066 by Dwight Okita the speaker is a fourteen year old Japanese girl. Okita chose to use a young girl, rather than an adult, to add an air of innocence to the girls story. If the speaker had been the girl’s father the story would be told from a more jaded understanding. The poem in its current form evokes a sense of sympathy from the readers who have an understanding of the relocation centers and concentration camps that the child would have been headed to. A reading from the perspective of the father may have evoked sympathy from the reader, but most likely not the same degree.