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.

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