- How should the victims be remembered?
- What should other schools do from here?
- Will this change the focus of the 2008 presidential campaigns?

Posted by Cathryn Broome in Blacksburg, Virginia:

As a student at Virginia Tech who has experienced this atrocity and has to go through the pain of a funeral today, I must say this. Indeed, no family, no school, no brother, no sister, no child, NO ONE deserves this. Yes, this is sad. Yes, we should keep the memory of all the fallen in our hearts. We welcome you to keep us in your thoughts, to console us, to pray for us. We welcome you to help us in any way you see fit. We do not, however, welcome your insults to our police force, or our university president, for those those insults hit our hearts as well. Being a Hokie is not just an empty name. Being a Hokie means embracing this unversity through good times and bad. It is a shared bond that we can't even begin to explain to others, and no one will ever fully comprehend. It is love for one another, that withstands the worst pain we could ever experience. After 4 years at this unversity, I have been transformed. I am a Hokie, tried and true and will never live down the motto, "Once a Hokie, Always a Hokie, Virginia Tech for Life." So we ask you this, stop the negativity. Stop the political talk. Stop the questioning of what COULD have been done. If you weren't here on that day, you will NEVER understand the horror we faced. If you did not lose someone you loved on Monday, while you may sympathize, you will never really feel the heartbreak that we feel, so please do not tell us that you understand, because as far as we're concerned, you don't. So take the negative energy you have been focusing on our university and inevitably us, and turn it into positive thoughts. Celebrate the 32 lives we lost. Celebrate our unviversity. Praise our HokieNation for the incredible feeling of togetherness and community we have shown the world. Throw away your political debates for now, disregard your thoughts on what could have been done, and diminish your anger and fears that this could happen to you. This didn't happen to you, this happened to us, and we surely hope it never happens again. All we want is to feel your love, while we share ours for the university and our fallen Hokie family. As Nikki Giovanni said, WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH, WE WILL PREVAIL.

I am second Generation Korean American and I think that:

- the generalization of Korean Americans could possibly lead to a racial backlash
- we are not bad people
- what differs, is the family concept we have
- we share a sense of guilt and shame about the others, but Cho's actions aren't caused by our culture nor our heritage

I hope the Americans don't look at us with a veil of hate.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States was gripped by war hysteria. This was especially strong along the Pacific coast of the U.S., where residents feared more Japanese attacks on their cities, homes, and businesses. Leaders in California, Oregon, and Washington, demanded that the residents of Japanese ancestry be removed from their homes along the coast and relocated in isolated inland areas. As a result of this pressure, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry.

More than two-thirds of those interned under the Executive Order were citizens of the United States, and none had ever shown any disloyalty. The War Relocation Authority was created to administer the assembly centers, relocation centers, and internment camps, and relocation of Japanese-Americans began in April 1942. Internment camps were scattered all over the interior West, in isolated desert areas of Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming, where Japanese-Americans were forced to carry on their lives under harsh conditions. Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by President Roosevelt in 1944, and the last of the camps was closed in March, 1946

Dear my loved diary
Today the American soldiers came and took us to a place we didn't know. The Americans promised to bring us into a "resettlement camp".
But in reality the camps are prisons. There are fences with barbed wire and guarded by the military service.
My whole family and I live in one room without furnitures.
The camp is located in the desert and so, we are isolated.
We hope it would be better tomorrow.


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