Compare And Contrast Farwell To Manzanar

Compare/Contrast Essay
In the wake of World War II many ethnic conflicts arose. Some simply state it was an era of pure terror, especially for those who were unfairly imprisoned in camps. An author, who first hand experiences a camp in the United States, was Jeanne Wakatsuki in Farwell to Manzanar. She describes her life and being incarcerated in a camp because Americans feared that all people of Japanese descent remained loyal to Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, meaning they were a "threat" to national security. Art Spiegelman, another author, recounts his father’s stories, in Maus, of living and surviving in a Nazis concentration camp during Hitler's reign. Maus and Farewell to Manzanar are both memoirs of the ethnic conflicts and the unjust

treatments of different races during World War II, but it is evident that the Jewish prisoners in Maus face more indignity, physical pain and emotional trauma, though both stories depict that any kind of suffering seems to affect the human spirit drastically.

The Japanese prisoners suffered a loss of dignity because of the food they were given to eat, whereas the Jewish prisoners suffered physical pain because they were malnourished. For example, in Farwell to Manazar, Houston describes the "inedible concoction”, which they are given when they arrived to the desolate camp in Arizona, "Among the Japanese, of course, rice is never eaten with sweet foods, only with salty or savory foods. Few of us could eat such a mixture" (Houston-20). The Japanese suffered indignity because of the stereotypical assumption that they could eat anything with rice

because of their Asian culture. They wanted to abstain from eating this gross combination, but their culture forced them to show deference and they ate it in silence. Unlike in Maus, Jewish prisoners ate out of desperation. In the concentration camps they were hardly given anything to consume. For instance, prisoners were given scarce portions of rancid food to eat, "One time a day they gave a soup from turnips...They gave us a small bread, crunchy like glass" (Spiegelman-49). The Jewish people ate unhealthy foods that was causing major body damage. Being malnourished caused them immense physical suffering. Compared to the Japanese prisoners that were at least given something that was "edible" even though it was un-pleasant, Jewish prisoners ate any form of food they were given, no matter how sickening it was, in order to stay alive. Nevertheless both of the groups were given food that was barely edible. The food they were fed, led to their suffering because they were famished which contributed to their major health issues.