Farewell to Manzanar and Related Readings (Farewell to Manzanar) by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

Farewell to Manzanar and Related Readings (Farewell to Manzanar) Reviews

• 
  Nanako Water

  This small 145 page paperback is like one of the polished stones collected by the civilian prisoners of the Manzanar internment camp in California. Dense, hard and indelible, but also simply beautiful. Wakatsuki Houston did a wonderful job of telling the true story of her American family, suddenly uprooted in 1942, disenfranchised from society, put behind barbed wire for years, and then provided with a bus ticket to anywhere in America to begin lives anew. All because they happened to look like the enemy who bombed Pearl Harbor. Being an American can involve intense feelings of shame and anger, as well as pride, love and hope. Every citizen of this country should read this book.
• 
  Victoria

  I didn't really like this book.
• 
  Morgan P

  I was interested to learn about the internment of Japanese Americans. But once I started reading it, I started to dread it. I know that it must be difficult to talk about what happened, because it was wrong. I still would have liked the story line to be stronger. It kept skipping around to different times. It only got an "OK" rating.
• 
  Holly

  "They're fudging the tally. They're afraid to have a Japanese girl be queen."
• 
  the radiant reader

  3.5
• 
  Monique Mendez

  Personally, I was very invested in this book from the start. There were times that I had gotten lost, however, because of some prior WW2 knowledge that I should've looked up and refreshed myself with.
  
  At the beginning, I thought that this book was quite interesting due to its start off of showing me a new side of the war that I had never seen before. Before the book, I honestly never knew of the Japanese internees and that there was such thing. During the middle of the book, I was feeling neutral with its content, not to say that it was at all uninteresting, yet, it felt dragged in my eyes and ears.
  
  The title had me thinking that from the start, the Wakatsuki's would be leaving a destination. However, the story led us on the family's tough journey through the camps, in and out. I felt as though towards the end it became more interesting as we got to feel and understand what Jeanne was going through. The details were so strong - hilarious, thought-provoking, and tear-jerking.
  
  Personally, I think the characters that stood out to me the most, if not the main, were Mama, Papa & Kiyo. I found Papa interesting as to how he really hid started to hide his identity after Fort Lincoln. I then found Kiyo interesting due to how he had the guts to stand up to his father. Undoubtedly, I would have never been able to stand up to my own folks like he has.
  
  Overall, I recommend this book as it involves new insights to those who have never been informed of the of the Japanese-American internees, or simply want an insight into the views of those who have been through those tough times. I gave this book a four out of five due to its great amount of detail and how much the author is able to recall their younger years even to adulthood. I find this book quite fond as you're also able to go behind the life of a family through their difficulties and warm moments - which some readers, like I, was able to find relatable at times.
• 
  Lara

  I'm glad I read it because I learned all I've ever learned about Japanese internment camps, but it was a weakly told story of loosely tied together vignettes. It had no depth. I couldn't feel anything for Jeanne or her story.
• 
  Patty

  An interesting read. The narrative was less about details of life in the internment camp of Manzinar and more about the struggle for belonging, identity, acceptance, and reconciliation.
• 
  Bruce Cline

  Farewell to Manzanar, The powerful true story of inside a Japanese American internment camp, by Jeanne Watasuki Houston & James Houston (pp 188). Due to my eldest daughter’s interest in internment camps after a visit to the Colorado History Museum, I picked this up book up. It is the story of a California camp from the perspective of 8-11 year old Jeanne Watasuki. Given the author’s age at the time of internment she was not fully aware at the time of the all the impacts on her, her family, her fellow internees, and the larger Japanese community. Like most other internees, her family lost their home, most belongings, her father’s business (including two fishing boats and gear), and their freedom. Because of the camp structure they also lost family cohesion, effects of which had lasting negative impacts. The book incorporates Jeanne’s memories, and those of family members and others familiar with internment. The author’s story is a mixture of her coming of age and her interests comparable to many girls of her age, juxtaposed with the trials of her family’s adjustment to imprisonment, racial suspicion, distrust, and living in harsh conditions. Not being terribly familiar with the details of the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, this was an interesting, enlightening, and saddening read.
• 
  Merika Guerrero

  In my opinion Farewell to Manzanar is a great and easy book to read and learn about the real role that Japanese-American people played in WWII in the United States of America. After Japon bombed Pearl Harbor on December 07, 1941. Leading all Japanese aliens and American-Japanese people living at that time in the United States to be incarcerated in low bad conditions internment camps by Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin Roosevelt.
  I enjoyed this book because I was able to visualized the living conditions in the internment camps true the real story of the survivor and author Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. Reading this book gave me the anger to look for more evidence, making wide research about this event history.
  The first impression with a sallow knowledge I had when I started to read this book was that it was a justified reason why 120,000 American Japanese people have been incarcerated in internment camps. But after I started immersing into what happened for real in the internment camps. I realized that there is no justification at all to judge a whole community only by their race!
  I think everybody within any rage of age should read or hear the audiobook Farewell to Manzanar to know the real truth about what people lived in the internment camps and to make connections that all this discrimination to certain communities still alive.
  
• 
  DeAndre

  Farewell to Manzanar, was a book about young Jeanne and her family's time while in the internment Camp Manzanar and after , following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.The book goes into full detail on how the internment camps had impact on Japanese Americans before,during,and after internment. I did enjoy the book, I like how the author's Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and her husband James D. Houston explained not only a child's point of view during this time, but a whole family's. Such as the mother, siblings and father, as well as giving a fully descriptive detail on how "loyalty questioning " was handled during this time, which I found especially interesting. One interpretation that I took away from this book was that family life during this time for Japanese Americans was deteriorating and broken up, as they had to keep hope and stay strong in the household, because of the events going on around them. I would recommend this book to anyone who has interest in cultural diversity or anyone whom would want to know more about some parts of history that that are not exactly talked about.