Farewell to Manzanar

Farewell to Manzanar is an autobiography by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston (written with her husband James D. Houston), who was a little girl when she and her family were placed in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. The book begins when Pearl Harbor is bombed. Jeanne is seven years old. Shortly thereafter, Jeanne and her family are moved to Manzanar, where the government has set up camps for Japanese-Americans, who they fear will not …

…kept the culture intact, free from blending with other groups. Cooperation further helped to ensure stability in a concentration camp in the 1940s. Examining Jeanne Wakatsuki’s experiences and her chronicling of Japanese society in Farewell to Manzanar can reveal a hint of possibly unintended motivation in the book: One could aspire to the mental standards that the Japanese set for themselves. It would be nice to have a world with more courtesy and individuality!