Farewell to Manzanar

One of the themes that comes up more and more in my work is how groups of people define and treat other groups of people. This book is considered a children’s book but has the same kind of truth and simplicity I saw in To Kill a Mockingbird because it is told through the eyes of a young child. But underneath, its story is shocking and frightening and one that is historically almost ignored.

All around the world, everyone says, “Never again” will something like the Holocaust, Japanese Internment, Armenian genocide, or Rwandan genocide—I could go on and on—occur. And… show more.

At the age of eleven I had never heard of internment camps in my own state of California until I came across this book, and I remember being astonished such a thing happened in the United States.

Though this title has been around for many years, Wakatsuki Houston’s autobiography book is still relevant and gently but factually introduces young readers to the unjust discrimination inflicted on innocent civilians/citizens. She tells of her family’s life before Manzanar, at the camp, and her pre-teen/teen struggle to fit in at school when returning from internment.  

In the early days of World War II, the U.S. government ordered 120,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes and move into internment camps. Manzanar, one such camp, was a hastily built town of army barracks surrounded by barbed wire. Jeannie’s family - all twelve of them - was assigned a space of two rooms with no running water. Except for a baby niece, Jeannie was the youngest. She did a lot of normal things - went to school, laughed and quarreled with her slightly-older brother, learned how to twirl a baton. But even so, she could never forget: she… show more.