Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Houston Autobiography

Farewell To Her

Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, is a story of her personal experiences before, during, and after the Second World War. In her book she details her life as a Japanese girl growing up in a Japanese internment camp, and how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Order 9066 affected her and many of the Japanese that were detained in the Manzanar camp along side her. In Houston’s book she gives great detail and insight into one of the most tragic events that transpired in American history, and how this event led to the eventual deterioration of her family structure. She notes that prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor her father was a successful, proud fisherman in the Long Beach area of California where her family led a happy normal American life. She recalls the morning of December 7, 1941 not knowing how the event that transpired would affect the rest of her life.

Houston’s father, whom she called Papa, was not an American citizen and upon hearing what Japan had done he returns home from fishing and burns all the ties to his homeland fearing deportation. She states that her father a proud man was eventually arrested for the alleged fueling of a Japanese Submarine and was detained at Fort Lincoln, North Dakota. The family then moves around from ghetto to ghetto before eventually settling in the internment camp at Manzanar, California. Houston’s family’s first views of the camp are bad although her brothers make light of the poor standards of the housing that they are required to live in. After Houston and her family spend the first night in the camp they awake to a layer of sand that has blown in through holes, cracks, and crevices in the wood to cover everything in the cramped quarters including themselves. The living conditions steadily improve although the author notes that the “camp was not ready for the Japanese, just as the Japanese were not ready for the camps”.

After spending a short time in Manzanar her family...