Farewell To Manzanar Analysis

The main conflict in the story, Farewell to Manzanar, the external conflict begins with one provocation: the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Sunday, December 7, 1941. This kind of conflict happens between the protagonist and society. On this day, Papa and his crew are headed out on a commercial fishing trip. Jeanne, her mother and the other woman wave goodbye from shore, and bid them safe travels. Though before the boat can disappear into the horizon, it is turned around under suspicion of providing oil to Japanese submarines. A passerby alerts them of the harbor's attack. Just days later Papa is detained, and Jeanne's internal conflict begins.

There are many things that happened to Japanese-American immigrants during World War 2 that people in this time period aren’t really familiar with. A story from a Japanese woman, Jeanne Wakatsuki-Houston, who was born and lived in this era, with help from her husband, James D. Houston, explains and sheds some light during the times where internment camps still prevailed. The writing piece titled “Arrival at Manzanar", takes place during her childhood and the Second World War. In the beginning, Jeanne and her family were living a calm and peaceful life in a predominantly white neighborhood, until disaster struck the world and they were forced to move due to escalating tensions between Japanese Orientals and white Americans. At the time, Japanese-Americans, like Jeanne, were forced to live in an internment camp, which is a prison of sorts, due to the war with Japan. The text is being told through a first person point-of-view in which Jeanne herself tells the story through her experiences during the war. In that story, which contains only a part of the original text, much of the setting took place either prior to and during the time she was sent to the internment camps and describes her struggle with it. This story clearly states the importance of family and perseverance which is shown through her use of pathos, definition, and chronological storytelling.

This book according to Takaki clearly shows that, during the Second World War in 1940 America was a white man’s country. Responses on wartime to different ethnic and cultural communities are shown in this book. This ethnic group consists of the Mexicans, African Americans, Chinese, Philippines, Koreans, and Japanese Americans. Then finally analysis about the historic attack on Hiroshima is shown. This clearly shows the level of racism during that time. According to Takaki combined military services and war simultaneously opened the horizons while raising awareness. There was a racial slight gaining of economic independence when the black women left the whites kitchen for assembly lines.

They’re afraid of what some of the parents might say”(124). This demonstrates how Jeanne’s teachers are trying to stuff the ballot box to prevent her from winning because she is Japanese. They believe that just because she is from a Japanese descent, she does not deserve to become the queen or to be represented as a major person in front of many people. This is one of the many consequences of WWII. Towards the end of the book Jeanne recalls a secret she told no one about how a old, and bitter woman passes a rude comment about the Japanese residents and spits and leaves.

These days most people don't realize that we need to accept what's happening in our lives and just look to the light at the end of the tunnel. Sean McCabe, web designer, lettering guru, and successful entrepreneur says, “Endurance is the price tag to achievement.” In Farewell to Manzanar we see a motif of endurance conveyed through the symbolic characteristics of stones. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston was put into relocation camps along with about 110,000 just because they were of Japanese descent. However throughout the story of her journey in Manzanar we hear the Japanese saying,”Shikata ga nai.” Jeanne and many other people in the book say this, which roughly translates to,”it cannot be helped.” These people endured the imprisonment and injustice simply because they saw that it must be endured. The stone motif in the story screams out the idea that when faced with a challenge you must endure and let it sculpt you into the person you are.

War can be loud and visible or quiet and remote. It affects the individual and entire societies, the soldier, and the civilian. Both U.S. prisoners of war in Japan and Japanese-American citizens in the United States during WWII undergo efforts to make them “invisible.” Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken hero, Louie Zamperini, like so many other POWs, is imprisoned, beaten, and denied basic human rights in POW camps throughout Japan. Miné Okubo, a U.S. citizen by birth, is removed from society and interned in a “protective custody” camp for Japanese-American citizens. She is one of the many Japanese-Americans who were interned for the duration of the war. Louie Zamperini, as a POW in Japan, and Miné Okubo, as a Japanese-American Internee both experience efforts to make them “invisible” through dehumanization and isolation in the camps of WWII, and both resist these efforts.

The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese led to the entry of the United States in the World War II. While the war was going on, the United States decided to put Japanese into camps an effort to get rid of Japanese spies and make sure that nobody had contact with Japan. In Farewell to Manzanar, an autobiography written by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, the author shares her experience at camp Manzanar in Ohio Valley, California during the 1940s. The book was published in 1973, about 31 years after Wakatsuki left camp Manzanar.

In the autobiographical excerpt from "Nisei Daughter" by Monica Sone called "Camp Harmony" and the novel Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, both of the main characters and their families are relocated to a Japanese internment camp in the western United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. They experience extreme hardships while being interned at the camps due to their race, however, although faced with such austerity, the Japanese-American families are able to overcome it through years of suffering. Between the two autobiographies, Farewell to Manzanar and “Camp Harmony,” there are various similarities and differences sharing the pain and joy of living in these internment camps.

Farewell to Manzanar is a collection of all of Jeanne Wakatsuki’s memories at Manzanar, an internment camp designed for Japanese immigrants. During World War II, the Japanese-Americans were relocated in Manzanar; the reason behind the relocation was due to them being accused of being threats to national security. I believe that the following paragraph is able to capture the struggle the author and the other residents of Manzanar faced in the journey home.

Among this group of “Nisei” was the Uchida family from Berkeley, California. Yoshiko Uchida, the youngest daughter in the Uchida family was a senior at the University of California at Berkeley at the time of the attacks. Years later, Yoshiko became a prolific writer of children’s books (Sato 66). In her book, “Desert Exile”, published in 1982, Uchida gave a personal account of the evacuation and incarceration of her family during World War II (Sato 66). Uchida’s book raises awareness to the specter of racial prejudice and the hope that no other group of Americans would have to endure this type of injustice and violation of their human rights (Sato 66).

Farewell to Manzanar is sociologist and writer Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's first hand account of her interment in the Japanese camps during World War II. Growing up in southern California, she was the youngest of ten children living in a middle-to lower class, but comfortable life style with her large family. In the beginning of her story, she told about how her family was close, but how they drifted apart during and after their internment in the camp. The ironic part of it is that her family spent their entire time together in the same camp. So why did her family drift apart so? What was once the center of the family scene; dinner became concealed with the harsh realities of the camp. This reflects the loss

In the United States World War II has been one of the most remembered wars of all time. Acclaimed historian Ronald Takaki asserts that for many Americans, World War II was fought for a “double victory”: on the battlefront as well as on the home front. Takaki’s book Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II reminds the audience that there was much, much more happening at home and on the frontlines during World War II than in the battlefield. Takaki presents a strong central argument; it illuminates the incongruity of America's own oppressive behavior toward minorities at home, even while proclaiming the role in World War II as a fight against oppression abroad. It also pays tribute to the determination and perseverance of ethnically diverse Americans in their two-front war against prejudice and fascism. In addition Takaki tells the story through the lives of ethnically diverse Americans: Japanese Americans who felt betrayed by their own country when families were sent to internment camps; For African Americans, the war for freedom had to be fought in their country’s own backyard; a Navajo code talker who uses his complex native language to transmit secret battle messages and confound the Japanese, while his people are living in desperate poverty on a government reservation. Their dual struggle to defeat the enemy abroad and overcome racism at home gives the Double Victory its title and its texture.

officials eventually began to recruit these internees into the American army. Not only was WWII a war about political alliances and geographical sovereignty, but it was also a war about race and racial superiority throughout the world. Propagating this idea, Dower (1986) argues, “World War Two contributed immeasurably not only to a sharpened awareness of racism within the United States, but also to more radical demands and militant tactics on the part of the victims of discrimination” (War Without Mercy: p.5). In elucidating the racial motivations and fallout from WWII, Dower helps one realize the critical role that race and racial politics played during the war and are still at play in our contemporary world. An analysis of this internment process reveals how the ultimate goal of the U.S. internment of Japanese Americans and the United States’ subsequent occupation of Japan was to essentially “brainwash” the Japanese race into demonstrating allegiance to America.

Wakatsuki-Houston presents an insightful portrayal of the Japanese-American internment camp in California known as Manzanar. She describes how her life changed throughout the experience as she grew from child to young woman. She captivates the reader's attention with intermittent interviews, describing the seemingly constant turmoil that each prisoner faced.

Imagine having to live in the camps during war time when the conditions happened to be horrible plus having the FBI going through people’s properties and people telling you how to live your life? To explain this story, the actions in Manzanar happened to be legal. During the time in the camps of Manzanar, where about five-hundred Japanese families lived, the FBI had gone through every home to ask questions and search the homeowner's property for the safety of the country to prevent any person from contacting the