Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston is the true story of a Japanese-American family's detention in California's Manzanar internment camp during World War II. Jeanne was seven when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and created the calamity that forced about 110,000 Japanese Americans to go away from their homes. She remembers the pressure of camp life "they had no way of dignity and privacy, the loss of authority, and the pressure to sign loyalty oaths. She also tells what she took away from Manzanar after it was closed "a feeling of shame and determination to be accepted as an American.
I. Pearl Harbor bombed- Japanese.
A. Papa captured.
B. Terminal Island.
C. Rid- off of belongings.
II. Manzanzar.
A. Small rooms.
1. Cold, harsh sand in rooms.
2. War department- clothes.
B. Taken by nuns- Catholicism .
C. Papa returns.
1. Wine, drinking.
2. Threaten to kill mama.
D. (Papa) Not sign Loyalty oaths .
III. 1944, Supreme Court rule.
A. Set free.
1. Wanted loan from government.
B. Woody in Japan (aunt Toyo, sugar).
C. Bought Car.
D. LA trouble in School.
1. Newspaper, scholarship society, yearbook, sports team.
2. Girl Scouts - ethnicity problem (Radine).
E. Woody Returns.
IV. Move to San Jose, California.
A. New School - (Queen Carnival).
After leaving Manzanar, Jeanne begins to understand what all her problems meant. She thought she deserved something awful, that she had done something wrong, and felt very ashamed of herself; in reaction, she tried to fit in as much as possible. Jeanne does not want to think about Manzanar, but as she grows, she realizes that her life began and was shaped there. For her to be able to get her peace back, to find herself and to lose he shame she is forced to go back to Manzanar and remember the effect it had on her and her family.
I liked the book and I think it is an interesting story. I learned many things. One of them is the difficult situation people can go through with the absence of a father.
