From 1942 until 1945, the Wakatsukis were confined in Manzanar, an internment camp in Owens Valley, California. Unfolding in three parts, this memoir recounts the Wakatsuki's experiences of living in Southern California during and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Arguments between the highly Americanized Jeanne and her more traditional Japanese father Ko stand alongside Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor-the event that drew the United States into World War II-and the internment of over one hundred thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans. The memoir presents intimate family moments as well as broader social events. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's first-person account of her family's experiences recalls an important episode in both the Wakatsuki's history and the nation's history. government-ordered internment during World War II had on Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens. Named one of the twentieth century’s 100 best nonfiction books from west of the Rockies by the San Francisco Chronicle.Published in 1973, Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment depicts the profound impact that U.S. Jeanne delivers a powerful first-person account that reveals her search for the meaning of Manzanar.įarewell to Manzanar has become a staple of curriculum in schools and on campuses across the country. She tells of her fear, confusion, and bewilderment as well as the dignity and great resourcefulness of people in oppressive and demeaning circumstances.

In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston recalls life at Manzanar through the eyes of the child she was. For her father it was essentially the end of his life. For Jeanne Wakatsuki, a seven-year-old child, Manzanar became a way of life in which she struggled and adapted, observed and grew. One of the first families to arrive was the Wakatsukis, who were ordered to leave their fishing business in Long Beach and take with them only the belongings they could carry. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese American internees. The powerful true story of life in a Japanese American internment camp.ĭuring World War II the community called Manzanar was hastily created in the high mountain desert country of California, east of the Sierras.

Farewell to manzanar jeanne