Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment is a first-person account of the United States government’s systematic relocation of thousands of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The book, written by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and her husband, James D. Houston, takes the form of a family memoir, beginning with seven-year-old Jeanne’s impressions of being singled out because of the way she looked. Farewell to Manzanar’s twenty-two chapters are arranged in three separate sections, each section delineating the progression of one family’s experiences and subsequent efforts to deal with the injustice and indignities of being uprooted and sequestered behind barbed wire fences in the California foothills.

The first section recalls the confusion and frustration that the Wakatsuki family faced as they learned about the U.S. government’s plans to relocate Japanese Americans for reasons of national security. Mr. Wakatsuki was soon arrested and sent to an internment camp in North Dakota for Japanese-American males. While he was away, the Wakatsuki family was finally relocated to Manzanar Camp, a one-mile-square area in the eastern shade of Mount Whitney that fenced in ten thousand Japanese Ameri-cans for nearly four years. Through the eyes of young Jeanne, the authors outline the various offenses that the internees endured: icy winds blowing sand through crevices in the makeshift barracks, open-trench sewers, crowded living conditions, and lack of privacy. The narrator explains that her father was returned to the family at Manzanar but that he returned a different man—ill-tempered, alcoholic, and abusive.

It is against this backdrop of squalor and lost hope that the second section of Farewell to Manzanar takes shape. The young narrator notes that slightly more than a year after her family’s arrival at Manzanar—despite hardships and even riots in camp—the lives of the Japanese-American internees became routine and relatively acceptable. She remembers baton twirling and ballet lessons, church lessons, and schoolwork as activities that lent an air of normalcy to her growing up. In this section, also, the Houstons tell of the dilemmas facing Jeanne’s older brothers and parents, as they had to decide whether to sign the government’s loyalty oath.

In 1945, when they were allowed to return to their former homes—and to what was left of their former lives—the Wakatsukis encountered great challenges of fitting into an often-hostile postwar environment. Jeanne’s brother Woody chose to deal with the challenge by visiting relatives in Japan to gain a better perspective of his Japanese roots, but the much younger Jeanne, as she enrolled in elementary school and later in high school, had difficulty balancing her Japanese heritage with the dominant forces of growing up “American.” She tells about her shock when she discovered her young classmates’ surprise at her speaking English, and she describes her longing to have long blonde hair in order to be accepted. In high school, she entered the homecoming queen contest against her father’s wishes; when she won, however, she regretted her tactics and motivation.

The book’s third section is a short epilogue to Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s story. Nearly thirty years after arriving at Manzanar as a child, she and her husband and three children visited the lonely sweep of desert where she had been held. As her children raced about the crumbling foundations of mess halls and barracks, she was able to confront the many voices of her childhood—with both sorrow and joy.

Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment documents one family’s experience in California as the United States government relocated thousands of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. In the first-person account, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston—with the assistance of her husband James D. Houston—remembers her childhood and growing up behind barbed-wire fences in the Manzanar relocation camp in the high country of the California foothills. Farewell to Manzanar is divided into three sections, each delineating a specific phase of the Wakatsuki family’s experience.

The first section deals with the initial frustration and turmoil the family experienced when they were told of the government’s relocation policy for Japanese Americans. Mr. Wakatsuki was arrested and sent along with hundreds of other Japanese American men to a camp in North Dakota. In his absence, the rest of the family, which included ten children, is moved to Manzanar Camp. Their day-to-day existence at the one-mile-square area in the Owens Valley, east of Mount Whitney, is seen through the eyes of seven-year-old Jeanne: frigid winds blowing sand against their legs, seven or eight family members all living in cramped quarters with virtually no privacy, and the stench of open sewers. Within a few months, Jeanne’s father was returned to the family, but he had changed from a gentle man to an ill-tempered, abusive alcoholic.

In the book’s second section, Houston describes how the internees at Manzanar came to cope with their physical hardships. Although the camp was often rocked by riots and bitter feuds, she was able to establish a young girl’s routine of baton-twirling and ballet lessons, church lessons, and schoolwork. She indicates that keeping busy away from her family’s barracks lessened the pain of seeing her parents quarrel. As Jeanne settled into a relative normalcy, however, her parents’ and older brother’s troubles increased as they agonized over the prospect of signing the government’s loyalty oath.

At the close of the war, the Wakatsukis were allowed to return to their home. Much of their property had been destroyed or stolen, however, and they often met with prejudice and hostility. Jeanne’s brother Woody visited Japan as a way to come to terms with his Japanese American status in the postwar environment. Jeanne, in elementary school and later in high school, had great difficulty balancing the expectations of her family’s Japanese heritage and her overwhelming desire to live as an “American” teenager. She describes several of her classmates’ reactions to her differentness, her own longing to look more American, and how in high school she entered the homecoming queen contest against her father’s wishes.

The third section of the book functions as a short epilogue to the Wakatsuki family’s story. In the early 1970’s, the adult Jeanne, her husband, and three children visited the site where Manzanar Camp once stood. In this return to the camp’s crumbling foundations, Jeanne was able to confront the sorrows and joys of her growing up.

Farewell to Manzanar offers a firsthand narrative of living through the U.S. government’s relocation program for Japanese Americans, and in this aspect it is significant as a young woman’s contribution to the literature of war, joining Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) in illustrating the effects of warfare on the everyday existence of an innocent citizen. Perhaps Jeanne’s story is especially memorable in that it chronicles the effects of an official government action against a notable portion of the American population, all in the name of national security.

The book, which inspired a made-for-television film in the mid-1970’s, also functions as a case study from a female perspective of first-and second-generation Japanese American families at a crucial time in American history. Farewell to Manzanar certainly can be compared to Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989), which explores the values shared and rejected between generations of other Asian American groups.

Jeanne’s search for identity, though, is the autobiography’s most compelling element. Throughout the book, Jeanne describes her childhood longing for acceptance—by her country, her peers, her family, and ultimately herself. While Farewell to Manzanar is not primarily a study of the search for a female identity, the book does explore how a young woman comes to terms with her ethnic identity in a nonaccepting environment. Jeanne painfully traces her attempts to “fit in” as a young adult, outside the school hallways and classrooms where academic propriety seemed to allow her to integrate socially. With Manzanar behind her and the war over, Jeanne learned too well that her different appearance and different customs constituted a barrier to her acceptance, no matter how hard she tried. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s story resonates with feminist literature; it provides a compelling narrative that addresses one young woman’s “sense of unworthiness” and her confrontation of forces apart from her, but that become a part of her.

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston has written a sequel of sorts to Farewell to Manzanar. Beyond Manzanar and Other Views of Asian-American Womanhood (1985) was bound with her husband’s One Can Think About Life After the Fish Is in the Canoe and Other Coastal Sketches.