A Family Life Confined

Theme

A Family Life Confined:

     In the beginning of the book, her family is relatively normal, but as the book goes on, it is clear that the Wakatsukis begin to fall apart. The way they are obligated to live in Manzanar took a major toll on all of them. One of the major aspects was that her father’s strong character wasn’t there for anybody to depend on anymore.

     The collapse of her family can be first seen when they start to ditch their family mealtime and start to get acquainted to the mess hall lifestyle. When they stop eating their meals together, they stop connecting, as a family should.  She finds herself longing for her old dining table back in her old home. All this time without her family leaves her with no mentor and very little guidance.  

     When her father returns from custody, it doesn’t go as well for the family as they previously thought. He came back delusional and bitter, and is no longer the man that her family depended on. Later, most of her older siblings abandon her family and transfer to New Jersey, showing the affects that Manzanar had on close to all families involved.

     Jeanne seems to blame her family’s collapse on Manzanar, rather than the entire war itself. While the war is the reason the camp exists, it only seems to directly affect the world outside of them. The everyday problems and injustices are the things she seems to focus on the most for the changes in her family. Things like the un-partitioned toilets, lack of privacy, and overcrowding became emotionally and physically stressful. The stress of everything became too much for the Wakatsukis, and most other families, which explains the riots in the camp and her father’s hostile actions toward her mother.

    The separation between previously happy Japanese-American families were torn apart by the confinement and discriminations of everyday life rather than the war that put them there.

The summary of a real life memoir

    Farewell to Manzanar is an autobiography written by Jeanne Wakatsuki on her time being held in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. The book starts on December 7^th, 1941 in Long Beach California. Her family includes her parents, 4 brothers, 5 sisters, and her grandmother. They are shocked at the news that the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor. In the wake of the news, the FBI arrests her father for supposedly supplying oil to Japanese submarines off shore.

    In February of 1942, Japanese-Americans are forced to evacuate their property and proceed to live in government owned internment camps. As Jeanne’s brother Woody just begins to fill in his father’s shoes as leader, the Wakatsukis are all transported to an internment camp in Owens Valley California, called Manzanar. With a population of over 10,000 internees, the Wakatsukis are miserable and overcrowded. They withstood terrible dust storms, diarrhea, filthy toilets, no privacy, and dull unappetizing foods.

    In September of 1942, her father is finally reunited with his family, but the feeling of humiliation haunts him. The only way for him to escape it is by making homemade rice wine. This soon leads to him becoming an out casted alcoholic. Jeanne becomes engulfed into the chaos that her family creates, but soon escapes by hiding under her bed, going to catechism, playing games, and finding new hobbies like ballet.

    In the spring of 1943, the Wakatsukis locate from the horrid block 16 to a better block 28. Jeannes father develops a better outlook on life by nurturing to his pear trees. Jeanne begins to experience what average school is like by joining clubs like choir and yearbook.

    Things begin to grow even tougher due to riots and mandatory loyalty oaths issued by the government. Woody and most of the younger men go against the older generations wishes and prove their loyalty by signing up for the US military. When the Wakatsukis are finally leaving Manzanar, her father refuses to leave on the bus, so he drives his entire family to Long Beach California in a blue Nash car. They move into an insubstantial housing apartment where her mother works in a fish cannery but her father isn’t able to find a job best suited to his self-esteem.

    By 1951, they move to the Santa Clara Valley where her father begins farming again. Jeanne begins to rebel against her father’s harsh conventionalism by being voted homecoming queen and becoming a majorette. Jeanne became the first of her family to earn a collage degree and she marries a Caucasian man, James D. Houston.

    In April of 1972, 30 years after her internment, Jeanne takes her children to the remnants of Manzanar. Old memories begin to return and a sense of closure begins to wash over the final words in the book.