Farewell to Manzanar

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Summary: Powerful story of an American family's struggle
Review: "Farewell to Manzanar" is by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston. In a foreword Jeanne Houston notes that this book, which tells about the internment of a Japanese-American family during World War II, is a true story. "Farewell" is a rich and fascinating chronicle. The Houstons follow the lives of the members of the Wakatsuki family before, during, and after the experience of internment.

The narrative is full of compelling details of the family's experiences. It is particularly intriguing to watch how the internment camp evolved into "a world unto itself, with its own logic"--a "desert ghetto." During the course of the book the authors discuss many important topics: religion, education, anti-Asian bigotry, the impact of the Pearl Harbor attack, the military service of Japanese-Americans during the war, and more.

The Houstons write vividly of the dislocation, humiliation, and injustice faced by the Wakatsuki family. Also powerful is the narrator's struggle to come to terms with her own ethnic identity.

For an interesting companion text, I would suggest "Desert Exile," by Yoshiko Uchida; this book also deals with the internment experience, but from a somewhat different perspective which complements that of the Houstons. I was moved by "Farewell." The book is a profound meditation on both the hope and the tragedy of the United States, in which the "American dream" can become intermingled with American nightmares. I consider this book an important addition to Asian-American studies in particular, and to the canon of multiethnic U.S. literature in general.

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Summary: Story of an Japanese Family Struggle
Review: Farewell to Manzanar is a story of a Japanese American family that struggles while living behind barbed wire at Manzanar. Manzanar was where Americans put the Japanese Americans so they could be protected after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This is an Awesome book to show what one family had to go through for being an ethnic and minority in the United States. I had to read this book for my ethnic and minority literature class and it opened my eyes on what the Japanese had to go through to be protected in the United States.

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Summary: A beautiful and heartfelt book
Review: Farewell to Manzanar is an autobiography by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston,who was a little girl when she and her family were placed in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. The book begins when Pearl Harbor is bombed. She is seven years old. About a month after, Jeanne and her family are moved to Manzanar, where the government has set up camps for Japanese-Americans, who they fear won't be loyal to America. Jeanne writes about Manzanar as the place where her life began. She describes her life there as a child. As the book continues and her family leaves Manzanar, she writes about the impact of Manzanar on her and the other members of her family.
Throughout the rest of her childhood, Jeanne tries to find herself and understand how to live in the world given her race and heritage. She struggles living up to her father's expectations. She does not find total peace with her own identity until she returns to Manzanar thirty years after she first went there.
The book not only focuses on Jeanne's life, but also tunes into the rest of her family's. It shows how her mother feels disgusted by the camp, the way her brother is transforming from a boy to a man, and about her fathers mental and physical downfall.

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Summary: Jeanne Wakatsuki A Japanese American
Review: Farewell to Manzanar was written by a Japanese American named Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and her husband James D. Houston. They wrote this book about how her life was in the Manzanar camp. They wrote the book in memory of her father Ko, her mother Riku, and her brother Woodrow M. Wakatsuki. My favorite character in this book was Jeanne's mom Riku. She was a very strong willed and strong minded person. Riku, the mother, reminds me a lot of me because she does some things that I did for my husband when I was still with him.
I can relate to Riku because she was with an abusive and alcoholic husband. I also was with an abusive husband who used drugs. I don't see how we put up with it, but her husband changed and my husband just got worse; I ended up leaving him. I also don't think I can relate to the other characters in the story because I have never been in a camp that had so many rules and boundaries.
I like this book very much because I like learning and reading about different cultures and how they live their lives. Some stories don't have a happy ending but I think this one has a pretty good ending to it. My favorite part of the book was when Ko Wakatsuki had and interview at Fort Lincoln. The reason I enjoy this part is he was being a smart-alecky person about the whole interview and it made me laugh. Ko is asked questions more than one time, and after a while he began asking the questions and it makes the interviewer very mad. My least favorite part about the book is when Mama is being abused by her husband. I don't see how she stood by him that long.
I don't think I would change any part of the story. This story happened in real life to the Wakatsuki family and we can't change what really took place. The story pretty much has a good ending. They got out of Manzanar camp with their dignity.
I highly recommend people read this book about Japanese Americans because it is very interesting to know what happened. It is not easy to hear, see or read about how the different cultures were treated.

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Summary: stephanie
Review: I loved this book Farewell to Manzanar. It was interesting to hear about Jeanne's point of view about the attacks of Pearl Harbor. See the story is about this young Japanese girl named Jeanne. She tells this story about how her and her family were deported to a place called Manzanar soon after the attacks on Pearl harbor and the beginning of World War II. This place called Manzanar, also known as an internment camp, is where every Japanese person living in America had to go during World War II because the United States government was scared that these people had something to do with the attacks on Pearl Harbor so they did not want to take any chances. This story is so inspiring because of the courage this little girl had and how much she had to grow up at a young age. She always kept faith even when things got really bad. I would recommend this story to high school students and older people because of the dramatic events that took place in this story.

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Summary: Sad personal story of a Japanese American family
Review: I read this book for literature class in the seventh grade. Although it wasn't my favorite book it was informative. The book told of events in the US during World War II. Many Japanese American families were forced to live in internment camps away from the coast. The author of this book and her family were sent to Manzanar in California. The FBI thought the father may be sending signals to the Japanese navy. Farewell to Manzanar is an autobiography. I learned a lot about the conditions these families had to endure. This was a very sad and shocking time in our history.

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Summary: Farewell to Manzanar; So Long
Review: I think this book was okay i did however learn that there are people in other places that are a lot worse off than I'am . Thankfully times have changed and our world isn't so cruel. I hope that the people in the story are a lot better off now.

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Summary: Farewell to Farewell to Manzanar
Review: This book discribes Jeanne's life before the war- during and briefly after.
Jeanne's story starts when she is 7 years old and takes us with her up to her years in highschool, and later her life as a parent. Some scenes show how the Japanese were discriminated and unequally treated. This book also shows how humans suddenly can find themselves making fun of their allies both knowingly and unknowingly, and the harshness felt between them.

Her discriptions are well written and much discribed as her view as a child living in Manzanar. The characters in this book are assumably real, but one must assume what the real charactors were like and read between the lines to understand their feelings. Many books such as this one should be read to get a full picture of the world situations during the 1940's.

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Summary: great book
Review: When I first read this book 2 decades ago, I read it to learn about a history that I hoped our government would atone for. In fact, later, the US government did make reparations, and I had hoped that that would be the end of that story.

But today post 9/11, the same issues have arisen. This time, it is not Japanese-Americans, but Americans of Middle-Eastern descent. Today, the US Supreme Court announced its decision in "Hamdi v. Rumsfeld" in which a US citizen of Middle-Eastern descent was being held prisoner indefinitely by the US government even though there has been no trial and Hamdi has no access to a lawyer. The Supreme Court wisely said that this was unacceptable. In many sections of the opinion, the Court kept referring to the lessons we learned from the Japanese-American internment experience that is described in this book.

When times are stressful and we feel like we are being attacked by the enemy, it is easy to conclude that anyone who looks like the enemy should be detained, even without any evidence that that person did anything wrong. I hope that all people who feel that racial profiling is appropriate (or that all Middle Eastern people are suspect) read this book. Maybe this book will change their minds.

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Summary: A story as relevant today as ever
Review: When I first read this book 2 decades ago, I read it to learn about a history that I hoped our government would atone for. In fact, later, the US government did make reparations, and I had hoped that that would be the end of that story.

But today post 9/11, the same issues have arisen. This time, it is not Japanese-Americans, but Americans of Middle-Eastern descent. Today, the US Supreme Court announced its decision in "Hamdi v. Rumsfeld" in which a US citizen of Middle-Eastern descent was being held prisoner indefinitely by the US government even though there has been no trial and Hamdi has no access to a lawyer. The Supreme Court wisely said that this was unacceptable. In many sections of the opinion, the Court kept referring to the lessons we learned from the Japanese-American internment experience that is described in this book.

When times are stressful and we feel like we are being attacked by the enemy, it is easy to conclude that anyone who looks like the enemy should be detained, even without any evidence that that person did anything wrong. I hope that all people who feel that racial profiling is appropriate (or that all Middle Eastern people are suspect) read this book. Maybe this book will change their minds.