Farewell To Manzanar Summary

Words: 1665
Pages: 7
Open Document
Jeanne and James Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar takes place during the evacuation to Japanese internment camps following the Attack on Pearl Harbor. The story starts with the main character, Jeanne Wakatsuki (one of the authors of the book) recalling the events on the day of the attack. She recalls being seven and watching her father and brothers prepare to leave for a fishing trip on her father’s boat, the Nereid. She remembers with detail her “Papa’s” leadership to her two brothers, Bill and Woody, and describes the boat and explains how the boat was in the process of being paid for by percentages of the catches. Jeanne watches the boats leave with her mother and brothers wife when they start to come back. The woman start to worry and …show more content…
She explains how her Papa comes from samuri family that no longer had the status because of Commander Matthew Perry. He went to military school but eventually dropped out and traveled to Hawaii. He got a job as a houseboy for an American lawyer and eventually went to school to get a law degree until he met her mother. Jeanne’s mother was born in Hawaii but moved to Washington. She met her husband in the market and, despite already promised to a farmer and her family not liking Papa, eloped with him and moved to Oregon. They floated around with various jobs until Papa fished in Santa Monica. Jeanne recalled her father as someone with “flourish” and said that he was remembered at Fort Lincoln due to his ability to speak both Japanese and English as well as working as an interviewer. Jeanne includes an interview from her father in the book describing the questions he was asked. He is asked about his uncle (who is in the military in Japan) and explains that he no longer has connections to Japan due to being the “black sheep of the family”. They ask him the names of his children (he leaves out Jeanne) and they question him about their suspicions of him helping the Japanese military. He prolongs the interview by changing the subject multiple times by asking the interviewers age and discussing asking, “When your mother and your father are having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you want them to stop
Show More

Related Documents: Farewell To Manzanar Summary

Summary Of Farewell To Manzanar

stories is that the people are unjustly persecuted based on their skin, looks or religion. However, for one of them, it was both heritage and religion. They all overcame each prejudice in a different way, and some did nothing at all. In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne doesn’t rebel or act out against something because it upsets her; she simply allows for it to happen, like the interned Issei. Although, to some extent, she knows that it’s wrong, she’s a scared child and has no idea what was to happen…

Words 587 - Pages 3

Summary Of Farewell To Manzanar

In Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki, “Why Children Did Not Knock At My Door”by Ifti Nasim, and American Pastime share a common theme of trying to find one’s true identity. The U.S entered World War II fighting against Japan, Germany, and Italy. In 1941 Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. American citizens of Japanese ancestry were seen as a threat. In 1942, President Roosevelt authorized deportation and incarceration of Japanese ancestry. Camps were guarded 24/7 and every family was issued a number…

Words 1158 - Pages 5

Summary Of Farewell To Manzanar

and imagery to compare a novel called farewell to manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston about an internment camp that the japanese had to go to and a short story called breakaway that was about a really good basketball that went through a career ending injury. In manzer it as better imagray cause it is longer so it can explain more while in break away it is shorter so it can not explain as much but it still as good imagery i think manzanar is better just cause it can explain…

Words 211 - Pages 1