in, among other ways, a disturbing rise in xenophobic sentiments against those of Japanese ancestry, many of whom resided along the California coast. These individuals and families, many US citizens, some legal residents but not citizens, had lived quiet productive lives. Panic regarding additional attacks by Imperial Japan upon the United States, however, resulted in the decision by the Roosevelt Administration to incarcerate Japanese and Japanese-American families far from the coasts to secure against sabotage and espionage targeting US military and economic facilities.

This reaction was not entirely unexpected by some of these families, as is evident by Wakatsuki-Houston’s description of her father’s reaction to news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Papa desperately feared falling under suspicion for his Japanese heritage and sought to destroy any possession, however innocuous, that might be used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to arouse suspicion regarding his loyalties. Sadly, as the author describes in the following chapters, such measures proved ineffective.

When Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese, Papa burns the Japanese flag he has brought with him from Hiroshima thirty five years earlier. He also burns all papers and documents which connect him to Japan. However, Papa's commercial fishing license and Japanese descent makes it easy for the FBI track him down.

The author, Jeanne Wakatsuki, relates that her father is eventually taken away by the FBI when they discover him staying at Woody's home on Terminal Island. Woody is one of the author's brothers. FBI deputies interview the five hundred Japanese families living on the island; they ransack houses, frantically looking for anything which could conceivably be used for signaling Japanese planes or ships. Anyone suspected of loyalty to the Emperor of Japan is arrested.

Jeanne learns from the newspapers that her father has been arrested for supposedly delivering oil to Japanese submarines off the coast. The author relates that she does not see her father again until a year has passed.

Farewell to Manzanar is a memoir written by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston. This memoir follows the life of Jeanne, a child of a Japanese immigrant (known as a Nisei), who was born in America. She was seven years old and living in California in 1941, when the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese took place. Now, because of the tension between the United States and Japan, most Japanese people were afraid of being arrested for simply being on American soil, which is why her father decided to burn his Japanese flag and his identity papers. He was hoping to be able to save himself from being arrested, but he did it in vain; he was still arrested by the FBI and beaten as he was taken to jail.

The next year, in 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which stated that anyone who potentially posed a threat to national security could be relocated by the military. This was when Jeanne and her family were taken to the Manzanar Relocation Center, where they suffered inhumane conditions (not enough warm clothes, not enough room for all of them, spoiled food, etc.) alongside many other Japanese Americans. Her family was reunited with her father in this camp, although Jeanne was the only one to be happy with their reconciliation.