42 pages • 1 hour read
Jeanne Wakatsuki HoustonFarewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1973A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Asian American Immigration to the US
Content Warning: This section discusses the US imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WWII, as well as racism/xenophobia.
The first recorded immigrants from Asia to the US came in the mid-1850s. The majority of these immigrants came from China with the prospect of making money during the gold rush, and they largely settled on the West Coast. Over time, US companies began to hire workers of Asian background for major infrastructure projects, such as the Transcontinental Railroad. More often than not, these workers experienced harsh labor conditions, including low wages and poor housing. Asian immigrants also had limited rights as US citizens; in fact, over the course of the late-19th century, several legislative acts limited the rights of Asians (particularly from China) both to enter the US and to receive citizenship.
The majority of Japanese who immigrated to the US worked either in Hawaii on sugarcane plantations or on farms in the continental US; Jeanne notes that her own father first came to Hawaii but moved to the mainland after seeing the poor working conditions that Japanese laborers were subject to on the island. In the early 20th century, two legal developments significantly impacted the Japanese American community: Legislation restricted land ownership to citizens, and the Supreme Court ruled that Japanese immigrants were not white and therefore could not naturalize. As a result, many Japanese Americans who had lived and worked for many years in the US lacked fundamental rights even prior to the US’s entrance into World War II.
Geographical Context: World War II
From 1939 to 1945, World War II (WWII) was fought between the Allied powers (France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and later the US) and the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the US officially joined the Allies. With the other three Allies focused on the war in Europe, US troops fought the majority of their battles against Japanese forces in the Pacific Ocean. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which allowed the US military to evict civilians from designated military areas; geographic proximity to both Pearl Harbor and Japan meant that Executive Order 9066 was primarily concerned with the US West Coast. Although it did not explicitly refer to the region’s Japanese immigrant communities, it was in practice used to relocate Japanese Americans to concentration camps. Its implementation is a turning point in Jeanne’s memoir, leading to the family’s incarceration in Manzanar.
Historical Context: Japanese American Concentration Camps
As a result of Executive Order 9066, many Japanese Americans were evicted from their homes and sent to “internment” camps. Both first-generation Japanese (issei) and second-generation Japanese (nisei) individuals were subject to forced relocation at 10 different camps. These camps, including Manzanar, were located in remote regions of the US West Coast. Overall, 122,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned, 70,000 of whom were nisei. In addition to the effects that incarceration had on the mental, physical, emotional, and cultural health of Japanese communities, many Japanese Americans experienced financial hardship, as they were forced to sell their property and belongings quickly before their imprisonment. Reparations to Japanese Americans did not begin until 1988, when the US government publicly acknowledged the problems associated with these camps. Ironically, the forced segregation of Japanese Americans resembled the establishment of concentration camps for those deemed “unfit” by the Axis power Germany during WWII, which the US decried as inhumane.
Farewell to Manzanar is largely an account of the author’s experiences in one of these camps. The roughly three years of incarceration left Jeanne and the rest of her family grappling with Fear of the Unknown, Japanese American Identity, and Imprisonment’s Harmful Effects on Mental Health. Although their experiences were their own and distinct—Jeanne’s father, for example, suffered from suspicion from within his own community—their time in Manzanar also embodied much of the Japanese American experience of WWII.
