Farewell To Manzanar Analysis

Summer Reading Assignment: Farewell to Manzanar

The novel, Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, tells her family’s true story of how they struggled to not only survive, but thrive in forced detention during World War II. She was seven years old when the war started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942. Her life dramatically changed when her and her family were taken from their home and sent to live at the Manzanar internment camp. Along with ten thousand other Japanese Americans, they had to adjust to their new life living behind barbed wire. Obviously, as a young child, Jeanne did not fully understand why they had to move, and she was not fully aware of the events happening outside the camp. However, in the beginning, every Japanese American had questions. They wondered why they had to leave. Now, as an adult, she recounts the three years she spent at Manzanar and shares how her family attempted to survive. The conflict of ethnicities affected Jeanne and her family’s life to a great extent.

Jeanne Wakatsuki was forced to leave her life and sent to an internment camp, because citizens of America feared they were traders.

They had this fear due only to the fact that Jeanne’s ancestry was from Japan. Jeanne herself had never been to Japan, and neither had any of her nine other siblings. However, just like every other Japanese American family, they were rounded up and sent away. “The name Manzanar meant nothing to us when we left Boyle Heights. We didn’t know where it was or what it was. We went because the government ordered us to… we went with a certain amount of relief. They had all heard stories of Japanese homes being attacked, of beatings in the streets of California towns. They were as frightened of the Caucasians as Caucasians were of us.” (Houston 17) For some, going to Manzanar was looked at as government protections, and they were content with moving to a place less affected by

war.

In despite of some people’s positive perspectives on the move to Manzanar, Jeanne’s mother hated every thing about it. That attitude only heightened when they actually arrived. “We had pulled up just in time for dinner… they issued us army mess kits… and plopped in scoops of canned Vienna sausage, canned string beans, steamed rice… and on top of the rice a serving of canned apricots.” (Houston 20) Jeanne goes on to explain how among the Japanese rice is never eaten with sweet foods and how few of them could eat that mixture. After dinner they were assigned to their barracks. They were in horror at the very sight of them. They were shacks the thickness of one one planking covered with tarpaper. Each barrack was sixteen by twenty feet, with one bare light bulb hanging from to ceiling and an oil stove as a heat source. They were assigned two for their family of twelve. “Her eyes blazed then, her voice quietly furious, “Woody, we can’t live like this. Animals live like this.” (Houston 24) In this quote by Riku (Mama) she expresses her very deep concern about their living conditions at the camp. She is frustrated and appalled that anyone would force someone else to live in such conditions.

Even after the war had ended and the camp had shut down, the effect it had on Jeanne and her family stayed. The family was very tentative to leave the camp. They were of the last family’s to actually leave, and only did so because they had to. They had no home, no belongings and no business because the government had taken her father’s fishing boat, and seized his company. “The truth was, at this point Papa did not know which way to turn. In the government’s eyes a free man now, he sat, like those black slaves you hear about who, when they got word of their freedom at the end of the Civil War, just did not know where else to go or what else to do and ended up back on the plantation, rooted there out of habit or lethargy or fear.” (Houston 132). Outside the camp, Jeanne struggled with her new surroundings. “As I came to understand what Manzanar had meant, it gradually filled me with shame for being a person guilty of something enormous enough to deserve that kind of treatment” (Houston 167) As an adult, she can process the effect Manzanar has had on her life, and how it continues to do so. Instead of seeing the oppressors at fault for placing her there, she blames herself and internalizes it. Of course she did nothing to deserve that treatment, but his quote shows the psychological effects Manzanar caused.

The effect that Manzanar had on Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston has stayed with her decades past the camp itself closed. Her story is one of the 110,000 Japanese Americans removed from the west coast, and not all were able to survive as well as she did. Many Japanese American men were taken to prison and deemed prisoners of war. Jeanne’s own father spent a year in prison and came back a changed, angrier man. In conclusion, the impact living at Manzanar took a toll on Jeanne’s life. A toll that continues to effect her now, as an adult living in the free world.