In Farewell to Manzanar, we learn about the childhood of Jeanne Wakatsuki and the prejudice that she had to face. Throughout the book, she shared many stories about her times during the camps that all helped her to develop and blossom into the person she is today. There were many important events that happened during her time in the internment camp, but there are three that stick out the most. When Jeanne was a girl, she saw the difficulties that her mom faced when Papa returned from imprisonment for his false accusations of “disloyalty”. Papa would act out in bursts of anger because he felt as if he had no power or control over his family in the camps. During one of his outbursts, he was drunk and started yelling at mama. When Jeannes older …show more content…
While Jeanne was in the camp she noticed the large presence of the Catholic faith inside of the camps, like the curious young girl she was, she wanted to learn more about the religion and started to hang around the Maryknoll Nuns. Although she knew her father was not a big fan of organized religion, she still wanted to be baptized by the nuns. When she brought this up to her father, he was appalled at the idea and made sure she would not get baptized. The reason I think this story is impactful and important is because it demonstrates how Papa wanted to control the family and also showed a glimpse of how Jeanne and her family's lives could be different in their decision making if Papa did not control them. When Papa arrived at the camp, it was very impactful to the Wakatsukis family and changed their lives in the camp. When he got off the bus, it was a very emotional moment in the story. As Jeanne ran up to him to give him a hug with tears running down her face, it showed how much she missed her father and also showed how clueless and unexpected they were to Papa's future
Anne Frank, a writer, once said,”Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” During World War II both Anne Frank and Jeanne Wakatsuki had to deal with bad people. Both also had to deal with not having the freedom they were used to. Although they were on different sides of the Earth their time during the war was very similar yet different.
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.
Her family stayed three years at the camp. Jeanne did not enjoy living in these camps. The memories of the past still haunted her as she grew older. “Writing it has been a way of coming to terms with the impact these years have had on my entire life” (pg
It shows that people’s opinions of her matter to her more than her opinion of herself. Also, it is shown that her mother is the one who gave Jeannette the confidence to tell the story of her past, which later provoked her to write this memoir.
Her Mom was ashamed of her for acting like this but Jeannette really wanted her Mom to change her ways and stop being homeless. She really loved her mother and wanted her to have a good life.
Jeannette and her siblings were all forced into completing tasks and taking on roles for themselves and their other siblings that are heartbreaking to read about and uncommon for most children to experience and tackle themselves. Much of this had to do with the lack of responsibility on their parents’ part and the ways they decided to live. As I have read the book, I have been amazed over and over again at the ways Jeannette handled the parental roles—both mother and father. She was very tough and never gave up, but you could tell there were other times she was just plain discouraged. One example we can see her using the roles to benefit her siblings was when her mom left to Charleston to “renew her teaching certificate” for 8 weeks and put Jeannette in charge of the money. She budgeted out $25 a week to provide the groceries and pay all of the bills that would need to be taken care of. Even though Jeannette gave her father (Rex) money when he asked, she
One of her earliest memories came from when she was three years old. Jeannette had to go to the hospital because she burned herself cooking hot dogs. Her parents didn’t like hospitals, so for that reason after a few weeks they came and took her away. Jeannette and her family were constantly moving from place to place, sometimes staying no more than one night somewhere. Her father always lied to them saying that they had to keep moving because he was wanted by the FBI. Jeannette’s mother never took much interest in Jeannette or her siblings, because the mother didn’t want them and thought that they were bothersome and in the way.
The smaller children that were confined with their families seemed to be generally unaware of the hardships they were facing. Many enjoyed individuality and separation from their parents since they didn’t have to keep as close of an eye on the children. In the book, Jeanne notices that it was almost impossible to continue sitting her entire family at dinnertime, and this unfortunate change occurred in many other families as well. For the first year of their confinement, before there was a semi-structured school system, children did just about everything they could think of to pass the time. As anyone would expect...
Manzanar allowed her to explore and be curious, yet she experienced both direct and indirect discrimination outside of the camp. Jeanne arrived at Manzanar when she was only seven years old. She did not know what to expect and handled internment camp differently than her parents. Jeanne recognized the cramped living conditions and gross food, but she made the best of her time at Manzanar. The internees began turning the camp around; they created a school, clubs, and various activities for all age ranges to participate in. Jeanne grew and learned more about herself through the activities offered. As the war began to slow down, it was announced that all the camps would be closed within a year. The announcement seemed positive as long as there was a home to go back to, this was not the case for Jeanne, “In our family the response to this news was hardly joyful. For one thing we had no home to return to.” (Manzanar 127). Jeanne was scared not knowing what home meant to her family, and also scared to face the world outside of Manzanar. She knew of the wartime propaganda, racist headlines, and hate slogans that were advertised. When Jeanne and her family left Manzanar, they saw signs such as, “Japs go back where you came from.” Jeanne constantly questioned and wondered why they were so hated. On Jeanne’s first day of sixth grade, outside of Manzanar, she felt isolated, foreign, and
Jeanne’s life was certainly impacted by her stay at Manzanar, and it may not have been for the better. Society had locked her and many others away because of its irrational fear. In response to feeling threatened, America lashed out towards the Japanese, attempting to insure that it was the one to be feared. The hostility, stress, and mistreatment that permeated Jeanne’s time before and during Manzanar impacted much of her future and shaped the person that she is today.
“It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how you life’s story will develop” (Dieter F. Uchtdorf). Most people can deal with difficulties, but their reactions to the hardships are different. Only some people can manage their problems. We should try to manage our behaviors in tough situations. If we can deal with our situations, we can overcome difficulties easily. In the story of Farewell to Manzanar written by Jeanne Wakatsuki, the story shows how war can change humans, their life, and their ranks. Although all of the characters of her book face the same problems due to the war and the camps they had to live in, they responded to those situations differently. All of them presented
I believe that Jeannette survived emotionally by her parents since she believed that her upbringing was a normal upbringing. It made her proud of her parents and family despite the neglect. I believe if she did not survive emotionally she would have become just like her parents when she gets older.
Most of her life Jeannette spent living among poverty. Whenever her family moved, they always moved to areas of high poverty and low economic standing. In these communities a lot of trauma, similar to events she had experienced, happened. It was hard for her to get away from all the bad things that happened, since she was constantly submerged in communities with it. Thus being said, this ultimately contributed to her become resilient to a lot of the traumatic events she encountered later on. Since she had witnessed some already, she was prepared to handle others traumatic events that might arise in her future. For instance, one day the neighbor decided to shoot his BB gun at Jeannette’s house. “I yanked the pistol out of Lori’s hand, aimed low, and pulled the trigger” (88). After witnessing her father handle his gun, she knew what a plausible solution to the problem would be—using the gun to defend herself and siblings against the boy. This set her up for recovering faster when encountering these traumatic events because had already been exposed to so many. Additionally, her parents were constantly on the move. Being constantly on the move never really gave her a sense of having a community to identify with, so when traumatic events occurred, she never had anyone to talk to about it other than her family. This contributed to why she was so distraught when her
Towards the middle of the memoir, the theme is shown through the irony of Jeannette’s mother’s situation as well as Jeannette’s feelings towards
Upon hearing the news of my maternal grandparents prolonged stay, I was ecstatic. In no time we were buying new furniture, painting walls, and discarding alcoholic beverages that gramps could stumble upon. As a devoted muslim, he would blow a gasket if he spotted even a drop of seasonal Sam Adams.