Introduction

Published in 1973, Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment depicts the profound impact that U.S. government-ordered internment during World War II had on Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's first-person account of her family's experiences recalls an important episode in both the Wakatsuki's history and the nation's history. The memoir presents intimate family moments as well as broader social events. Arguments between the highly Americanized Jeanne and her more traditional Japanese father Ko stand alongside Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor—the event that drew the United States into World War II—and the internment of over one hundred thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans.

Unfolding in three parts, this memoir recounts the Wakatsuki's experiences of living in Southern California...