Fictive Fragments of a Father and Son

 

Fictive Fragments of a Father and Son…

            After reading this piece I was left wondering how bizarre it is for a father and son to be so disconnected.  I know parent- child relationships are not easy but to grow up with a father and no know much about them boggles me.  Children are directly shaped but the experience of a parent.  Not knowing much about a parent leaves a child lost in who they are.  A child is left to put the pieces together with the little information they have.  They rely strictly on the imagination.  We see this in this narrative as the narrator makes up stories and assumptions about his father’s life to figure him out.  He has to try out different scenarios in his mind to fit the puzzle pieces of his father together.  

I asked myself why a parent would not want to share their story with their child, especially one that is so important to their culture and history? 

            What I came to realize at the conclusion was that maybe for the father to move on in life he had to forget his past.  If he opened himself up to all of the hurt would he have been as successful?  In adopting  being “200 percent American” gave him everything he has today.  Maybe if he exposed his son to his terrible past he might of felt it as a burden.  Sometimes in life in order to move on we have to leave the past there.  If he was to open himself up to that portion of his life it keeps him from becoming fully “white”.  “My father’s name was originally Katsuji Uyemura.  Then Tom Katsuji Uyeumura.  Then Tom Katsuji Mura.  The Tom K. Mura.”  As the father became more “white” he moved farther and farther away from his identity.  He is not the man from the interment camp anymore.  He is a blue collar American.