Farewell to Manzanar

Farewell to Manzanar is an autobiography by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston (written with her husband James D. Houston), who was a little girl when she and her family were placed in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. The book begins when Pearl Harbor is bombed. Jeanne is seven years old. Shortly thereafter, Jeanne and her family are moved to Manzanar, where the government has set up camps for Japanese-Americans, who they fear will not be loyal to America. As an adult woman writing this book, Jeanne sees Manzanar as the place where her life began. She describes her life there as a child. As the book progresses and the Wakatsukis leave Manzanar, the authors write about the impact of Manzanar on Jeanne and other members of her family.

Throughout the rest of her childhood, Jeanne tries to find herself and understand how to live in the world given her race and heritage. She struggles, torn between living the life of Caucasian teenagers and living up to her father's expectations. She does not find total peace with her own identity until she returns to Manzanar thirty years after she first arrived there.

Farewell to Manzanar is not only a story of Jeanne's experience. She also tracks the trials of her family before, during, a

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

The elders, the Issei (those who migrated from Japan around the turn of the century), frequently tell each other in such dismal situations, "Shikata ga nai," meaning "It cannot be helped" (Houston, 12, 71).

Provoked by the violent and deadly surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt declared war against Japan. Mama responds with a bow and "Arigato. As a result, the detention camps for Japanese Americans were closed. In the camp at Manzanar, California, it was particularly dry and dusty, for it was located just outside the Mojave Desert. They also hold on to old values, such as when Papa asks Jeanne what she wore to the tryouts for high school carnival queen.

The journey that Jeanne makes in her memoir highlights several sociological issues.

One characteristic that marks the Japanese is their refusal to assimilate and their unyielding nature. Manzanar happened because people were Japanese, a different and threatening heritage during the war. She wants to become totally Americanized; dressing, acting, and thinking like her peers. In the

beginning, the living conditions at the camp were very sub- standard, for they were quickly constructed and not kept clean. The first sign of trouble for Japanese-Americans was the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Woody deals with family heritage in a completely different way. Examining Jeanne Wakatsuki’s experiences and her chronicling of Japanese society in Farewell to Manzanar can reveal a hint of possibly unintended motivation in the book: One could aspire to the mental standards that the Japanese set for themselves.

Approximate Word count = 1902
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.