Internment In Farewell To Manzanar

Japanese Emperor Hirohito once said, “The fruits of our victory are tumbling into our mouths too quickly” (Hirohito 1942). During WWII the POW’s in Japan and the interned Japanese-Americans suffered different yet very similar internal strife because of the physical mistreatment and emotional torment of the camps. The disastrous events of the war brought the whole world to their knees in the sense that once it was over billions of lives had been lost.
To begin, Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki, stated the viewpoints of a young Japanese-American girl growing up with the hardships of living in an internment camp. She often refers to those parts in her life as ‘shaping’ herself, but being the ‘death’ of her father. The internment had a

On the other perspective, Louie Zamperini, an American POW in Japan and the central character of the nonfiction novel Unbroken, had a much different experience than Jeanne. During his imprisonment, himself and others were often starved, beaten, emotionally strained, and forgotten about. A powerful description of his experience was stated as, “Now his Olympian’s body had wasted to less than one hundred pounds and his famous legs could no longer lift him. Almost everyone outside his family had given him up for dead” (Hillenbrand). Since then, he has dedicated his life to making peace with what happened. The emotional toll led by both parties has its similarities, however how they were reached is quite different.
Throughout both novels the reader truly becomes engulfed in the emotional depth of the two settings. In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne is constantly involving herself in activities such as ballet, carnival queen, and Geisha classes. These distractions are partially what helped her keep her mind off of what was truly happening in her life. She specifically has the most trouble accepting her Japanese ancestry, and feels very