Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, is the memoir of a young Japanese-American girl (Nisei) who, along with her parents and siblings were uprooted from their California homes in 1942 and forcefully relocated to Manzanar Internment Camp located at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. (https://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm). Being born in California, she along with about 2/3 of the other 11,000 or so internees, were American citizens who had been deprived of their property and livelihood and were relocated due to racist attitudes and wartime suspicions. Although at her young age, such issues really did not make much of an impression with her until after the war was over and the family was trying to reintegrate itself back into peacetime America and she was becoming just old enough to comprehend such things.

This brings out one aspect of her experiences that I found more interesting, frankly, than her internment experiences. That was trying to reintegrate after the war. Does she try to maintain her Japanese ancestry as her father (Issei) wanted her to do to include marring a Japanese boy, or does she try to blend into the Caucasian society that still views her with suspicion, even hatred. Afterall, she is also a native born American. I wonder how common this experience was with Nisei.

All in all an interesting and insightful read, though not necessarily spectacular. ( )

This memoir is the first book I read that discussed the realities of Japanese internment during WWII. I first read Farewell to Manzanar in elementary school and was struck by the honesty of the narrator, Jeanne, about her complicated relationships with members of her family, especially her father. It was fascinating to reread as an adult, where I gained a better perspective about Jeanne's honesty. It took a great deal of courage, not only to survive her internment in Manzanar, but to write honestly about her father's flaws and the dissolution of her family within the backdrop of Manzanar. Even in the 1970s, this would be a difficult topic for any woman to write about, but particularly for a Japanese American woman to depict her family as anything other than perfect, and therefore undeserving of internment. This would be a fascinating reread for my high school students, many of whom likely read this text like I did in elementary school, because it would draw parallels to imperfect characters they read in other texts, like Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. ( )

This memoir sheds light on an all-but-forgotten shameful part of American history when Japanese Americans were forcibly evacuated to settlement camps following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The author was 7 years old and one of 10 children sent with their parents to live in Manzanar, an internment camp in California. Most left behind belongings and homes that were plundered. This is an insight into the deplorable living conditions when they arrived and life in the camp. It is also a memory of how her family survived until they were forced to leave with no home to which they could return. Many of these Japanese Americans served in the military and many did not return from WWII. ( )

Great novel about the Japanese-American experience during World War II. What stook out to me was the honesty. The author tells the story from the perspective of a young girl and doesn't hold back. She goes into detail on how the experience affected her parents and her siblings/herself differently. This novel is a great read for younger students, because it gives a young person's perspective on life during the internment process. ( )

Very good. ( )