Brittnee+A's+Farewell_Manzanar

// By: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston // __** Questions **__ 1. Much of Farewell to Manzanar deals with Jeanne's struggle to discover her identity. How does her Japanese identity conflict with her American identity? How does her experience with prejudice help her to reconcile the two? 2. What is the role of non-Japanese characters in Wakatsuki's memoir? 3. Upon returning from Manzanar, Jeanne finds that the hatred she must face is very different from the “dark cloud” she imagined would descend on her. What are the different forms of hatred depicted in Farewell to Manzanar, and how do they manifest themselves as propaganda or other?
 * __ Farewell to Manzanar __ **

__** Background: **__ // This Story takes place during WWII, and shows the life of a Japanese-American family forced to go to relocation camps. Throughout this book it shows the many struggles and situations the Wakatsuki family is but through. // // [|Life in one of these camps] was no picnic, the rooms where tiny, they were forced to eat spoiled food and sometimes there family would be split up. //

__**Question One:**__ Jeanne is living a double life; she is a Japanese-American. She was born in America so that makes her an American, right? After the bombing at Pearl Harbor, Americans lost trust in the Japanese. So then President Roosevelt ordered the evacuations of all Japanese-Americans to relocation camps where they would be held until the war was over. This isn't fair in my opinion; these Japanese-Americans were born in America making them just as much as a citizen as anyone else. Jeanne struggles to find which side she is on. She is Japanese, and that is where her family came from, but after being put in those camps by Americas she didn't feel American. By the end of the book she takes pride in being a Japanese-American, she is proud to be one. On pages 60-64 in the book, Papa a.k.a. Jeanne's dad is interviewed about his ties with Japan. When Papa is asked the question if he feels Lowell to Japan and its emperor Papa remains silent and does not answer the question. Jeanne's Japanese identity is always conflicting with her American identity. How could anyone choose a side? If you choose to side with Japan you could get kicked out of the country but, how could she side with America when she isn't even treated like one? Japanese-Americans had always been faced with bias towards their race. Once WWII had begun and after the bombing at Pearl Harbor this biasness only increased. Jeanne in the end is able to reconcile both the Japanese and American race, and take pride in where she comes from and who she is

__**Question Two:**__ In Wakatsuki's memoir the use of non-Japanese characters implies the people outside of the relocation camps and also the people running them. She shares her story from a young girls’ perspective and explains what the people around her are like. She shares how she and her family were treated. The non-Japanese characters represent the Americans either outside of the camps or the people running them. She expresses her feelings about how they were treated. This doesn’t shine a very bright line on the Americans. The non-Japanese characters are not shown in a not so pleasing way; this is definitely not something Americans should be proud of. The Racal profiling is wrong and the camps are a show of how the executive order was not right.

__**Question Three:**__ After the Japanese-Americans were released from the relocation camps they still had to face racial profiling. Riots and fights would break out in random in the middle of the street. All people born in America are Americans no matter what nationality we are. Propaganda was shown all across the street no matter where you were. This is wrong!! Jeanne and her family where very scared to be on the streets in the book she even stated that she felt safer in the camps then she did when she was released. This shows how Japanese-Americans weren’t treated like Americans. In fact I think it’s wrong to call them Japanese-Americans because they are just as American as the rest of us. Sure the county where they came from bombed Pearl Harbor, but did they? It almost like sending an incident person to jail for a crime they didn’t commit. Here in America during the time of WWII many signs or advertisements where put up to show [|propaganda]. Every American citizen deserves to feel safe in their own country. I think this can be a learning experience for every American to make sure that everyone feels at home in this country.

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**__Evaluation Questions__** 1. What aspects of this wikispace do you find most enlightening? Why? 2. How have the authors of this wikispace addressed Jeanne's identity struggle in a different manner than you did? Specify! 3. How have the authors of this wikispace examined Manzanar in a new way? Quote and detail. //One area I noticed that I did not include was the background information. i thought that including this was very clever. That way, anyone can read the wikispace and understand it. It would make sense to the reader even if they had not read the book. -E.B.//