Theme Of Farewell To Manzanar

After reading Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s memoir Farewell to Manzanar about the Japanese and her family being interned during World War II. I have a total different point of view on the Japanese internment camps, and I now understand all the anger, shame, and sadness that Jeanne’s family and the other Japanese had more than I did before. Before reading Farewell to Manzanar I did not know much about the Japanese being interned. I knew about it, but not much. At first I just thought the Japanese were put into camps and had really good conditions they just weren’t where their home was, it wasn’t. As you follow along with Jeanne in the memoir you almost visualize the horror and shame that Jeanne’s family went through in the camp. In the memoir you hear about the nasty food, shacks for houses, riots, and lack of privacy that went on in Manzanar and other internment camps in America just because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and now every Japanese citizen in America became the enemy even when over half the population of the interned Japanese were born Americans. Ko Wakatsuki, Jeanne’s father, we learn when he was 17 he got money from his favorite aunt and went to America. When he first arrived he was a confident man and wasn’t put to
Lincoln Ko becomes ashamed, and he starts to drink when he gets back to his family. He does this to take away his problems, but Ft. Lincoln isn’t the only reason to cause him to drink, other fellow Japanese people at Manzanar call Ko an “inu” which means dog in Japanese. People called Ko an “inu” because they believed he was let out early from Ft. Lincoln because he knew classified information about America. Jeanne says in the memoir “Papa was suddenly a man with no rights who looked exactly like the enemy.” Luckily Ko quit his drinking stage after Jeanne and her family moved to block 28, he slowly tried to become the man he was