Farewell to Manzanar

Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp--with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular song except the  nation's #1 hit: "Don't Fence Me In."



Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention . . . and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States. Meredith Kiger - Children's Literature

In this timely reissue of a 1973 edition, Ms. Houston recalls her childhood experience of being interred with her family at Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp. Ms. Houston's parents and extended family were Issei, the Japanese word for first generation Japanese-Americans. Many Issei had settled in the coastal areas of California, just as her parents did. They prospered there, only to have it all taken away after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Suddenly, all Japanese were suspect, and a presidential order demanded that they all be removed from their homes and sent to hastily prepared camps. Jeanne, her mother, father, brothers and sister were sent to Manzanar, a camp near the high Sierra Mountains in California. 23 short chapters recall what her family had to endure both physically and emotionally. Only 9 years old at the time, Jeanne witnessed what this social and cultural disruption did to her family, especially to her father. A patriarch in the true sense of the word, he suffered immeasurably from the humiliation of losing his status as head of the family. Jeanne's descriptions of camp life relate the good and the bad of communal living. Once envisioned as a memoir for her extended family, this story has been reissued in the hopes that the more recent tragedy of 9/11 would not result in the same fears and misjudgments that a similar event like Pearl Harbor precipitated. Seeing the events through the recollections of a young child makes for perfect reading as parents or teachers seek ways to assist young people find appropriate avenues to allay fears and anxieties and to foster understanding of other cultures. 2002 (orig. 1973), Houghton Mifflin,More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography