This critical review examines Jeanne Wakatsuki-Houston's memoir Farewell to Manzanar (1983), which documents the Japanese-American internment experience during and after World War II. The review analyzes how each member of the Wakatsuki family responded differently to forced relocation — from the father's emotional collapse and alcoholism to the mother's quiet dignity and the young Jeanne's gradual awakening to racial injustice. The paper highlights the memoir's narrative power in using a child's perspective to expose the irrationality of wartime racism, traces the long-term psychological effects of internment across generations, and draws parallels between wartime anti-Japanese prejudice and more contemporary forms of racial profiling in American society.
Shikata ga nai: "It cannot be helped; it must be done" (Wakatsuki-Houston 16). Such was the lament of many Japanese-Americans who were interned in detainment camps during World War II. But behind this seemingly passive, accepting phrase — which appears to confirm American stereotypes of Japanese acquiescence — the reality of the detainees' emotional resistance to their victimization was far more complex and varied, as chronicled in Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment by Jeanne Wakatsuki-Houston.
While Japanese internees were forced to accept their fate and to cooperate in order to survive unbearable conditions, every member of the Wakatsuki family had a distinctly different response to the internment. Wakatsuki-Houston's chronicle of her own family's diverse and often contradictory reactions demonstrates that Japanese-Americans' views of a government that claimed to represent them — yet also declared them pariahs — defy easy characterization.
The "Greatest Generation" of Americans who fought during World War II is often commemorated as among the best this nation has ever produced. However, there is a darker side to the patriotism and stalwart attitudes of that era. It is easy to forget the deep racism directed specifically against Japanese-Americans, who were called "Japs" even in popular movies and literature — not just in slang. There was no distancing phrase equivalent to "the Nazis" (as opposed to "Germans") to describe the Japanese enemy. The Japanese were hated, even Japanese-Americans like the Wakatsukis.
Through no fault of their own, and despite being loyal Americans, the Wakatsuki family lost everything simply because of their racial identity. Although some Japanese-Americans stoically said shikata ga nai, the irony is bitter: while the Nazis were condemned for their racist ideology, Americans were exhibiting the same kind of discriminatory attitudes toward the Japanese.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Wakatsuki's Japanese-born father had a sense of foreboding. He destroyed his Japanese flag and identity papers — the last remnants of his connection to Japan — and remarked that he felt as if his mother and father were fighting and all he could do was hope they would stop. As a non-citizen, he was arrested by the FBI and forced to give up his livelihood as a fisherman. The rest of the Wakatsuki family was eventually relocated to an internment camp under President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, which authorized the military to intern Japanese Americans in the name of national security.
Jeanne's father was a proud man who entered an emotional downward spiral after being deprived of his livelihood. A former samurai, he was devastated by the rejection he had experienced in America. Jeanne grew estranged from her parents in the internment camp, subject to its collective rules and organization, yet she also felt different from other Japanese children — many of whom were not from a middle-class background like herself and spoke Japanese fluently, while Jeanne spoke none. When her father was reunited with the family, his alcohol abuse worsened severely under the weight of his despair. Convinced he was a failure as a father, husband, and provider — his property having been seized without compensation and he himself having been deemed a potential enemy of the state — the American government's behavior destroyed the loyalty and hope of a man who had genuinely believed in the American dream.
"Mother's dignity undermined by camp conditions"
"Child's innocence reveals injustice; adolescent identity struggles"
"Generational trauma and modern racial profiling comparisons"
Farewell to Manzanar is a moving, gripping memoir because it uses the story of a single individual to symbolize an entire historical era. Jeanne records her personal feelings and impressions while interweaving historical facts with her reconstructed internal monologue, so the reader learns about the home front during World War II as well as about Jeanne's adolescence. Seeing the Japanese internment camps through the eyes of a child highlights the sweeping and irrational nature of President Roosevelt's dictate, and knowing that Jeanne's stories are true — not a fictionalized account — forces the reader to confront this episode in American history without denial or excuses.
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