Cameron Smith Garners Award for Fascinating Website

Junior Cameron Smith garnered the Outstanding Entry for Asian American History Award for her project in this year’s National History Day contest at Huntington High School. The teenager’s historical website detailed the infamous internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“I grew up hearing stories of my great-grandfather Dee working on the Manhattan Project and my great-grandfather Pop, digging fox holes along the beaches of Normandy so that he, as a doctor, could render aid to the falling soldiers,” wrote Ms. Smith in the process paper that accompanied the website. “These were the stories told of ancestors that I barely knew but that I had the good sense of understanding how special they were. My great grandparents, along with others of their generation were dubbed the ‘Greatest Generation’ because of their sacrifice growing up in the Great Depression and facing the largest global conflict ever known. So were there any regrets?”

Ms. Smith said she found her in an interesting conversation with her maternal grandfather. “He was a Navy officer and he explained to me that there has always been great pride in serving in the United States military,” she wrote in the process paper. “He explained that as soldiers during World War II, both his father and his father-in-law were honored to serve and although inevitably changed by what they saw during their service, they had a sense of justice, pride and dignity for the actions they took to help win the war.”

Despite the obvious physical risks, Ms. Smith said that both great-grandfathers “were called to duty by a sense of responsibility to protect America.”

“‘Needing to do what needs to be done,” her grandfather explained. “‘Honor your oath of service,’ which demands a commitment to support the Constitution, serve the people and obey orders,” wrote Ms. Smith in the process paper. “But what if the orders conflict with one’s duty to support the Constitution? Can and should the US Government obstruct citizen rights if it means protecting national security in times of war? These were the questions that led to my inquiry on the Japanese internment camps used during World War II.”

Ms. Smith worked hard on the project and developed a very interesting website. She titled her project “Innocents in Captivity.”

“World War II presented a significant challenge to the balance between individual rights and the government’s responsibility to protect national security and thus met this year’s National History Day Theme: Rights and Responsibilities,” Ms. Smith wrote. “In response to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which led to the United States entering into WWII, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066 authorizing the forced relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. The purpose of the camps was to forcibly relocate and detail people of Japanese ancestry, primarily living on the West Coast of the United States, due to fears that they might pose a security risk as a potential spy or saboteurs following the attack on Pearl Harbor. This was done, despite the fact that most were American citizens, and thus violated their fifth amendment right to due process.”

Ms. Smith is a top student academically and an excellent athlete, too, excelling on the Blue Devil girls’ soccer and lacrosse teams.

“Concerning this year’s National History Day Rights and Responsibilities one can look to examine how individuals and groups within society have been granted certain freedoms while also being expected to fulfill responsibilities to themselves and their community,” Ms. Smith said. “However, with the topic of Japanese internment camps, I instead wanted to explore the concept of citizenship and individual liberties. All too often we, as citizens of America, see our liberties as absolute, unalienable and thus cannot be taken away. However, this is not the full story. As we see with the Japanese internment camps of the 1940’s, there are certain exceptions and limitations that can occur when situations such as national emergencies arise. So although the Japanese internment camps of the 1940’s were ultimately [ruled] constitutional, the historical impact is something worth studying as it does highlight the delicate balance between individual liberties, societal needs and national security.”

After years of participating in this program, I once again turned to website creation as a means to deliver my thesis. The website project allows me to provide an interactive, mixed media, representation of the topic, while building the narrative through direct quotations from primary and secondary sources.