Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment

“None of these kids actually attacked. It was the threat that frightened us, their fearful looks and the noises they would make, like miniature Samurai, in a language we couldn’t understand.”

Jeanne reflects on her fear of her new peers—and thus Fear of the Unknown—on Terminal Island. Jeanne is frightened not only because she doesn’t know them but also because she doesn’t understand their Japanese dialect or their tough demeanor. Interestingly, Jeanne feels like an outsider living in a predominantly Japanese community, as opposed to her previous neighborhood where they were the only Asian family.

“There is a phrase the Japanese use in such situations, when something difficult must be endured. You would hear the older heads, the Issei, telling others very quietly, Shikata na gai (It cannot be helped). Shikata na gai (It must be done).”

Jeanne reflects on endurance as an important motif in Japanese culture. Difficulties are to be expected in life, and one must prepare for such hardships by accepting their presence and enduring the possibility of pain.

“It seems comical, looking back; we were a band of Charlie Chaplins marooned in the California desert. But at the time, it was pure chaos, that was the only way to describe it. The evacuation had been so hurriedly planned, the camps so hastily thrown together, nothing was completed when we got there, and almost nothing worked.”

This quote is an example of Jeanne’s use of present-day point of view to reexamine a situation from a fresh perspective. Her allusion to Charlie Chaplin refers to how those in Manzanar had to wear ill-fitting clothing to stay warm, but it also illustrates her immersion in American culture.

“[T]he entire situation there, especially in the beginning—the packed sleeping quarters, the communal mess halls, the open toilets—all this was an open insult to that other, private self, a slap in the face you were powerless to change.”

Concentration camp conditions stripped Manzanar residents of their privacy. Although these conditions improved over time, the lack of privacy was one of the many ways in which the camps undermined the mental health of Japanese Americans, illustrating Imprisonment’s Harmful Effects on Mental Health.

“My own family, after three years of mess hall living, collapsed as an integrated unit. Whatever dignity or feeling of filial strength we may have known before December 1941 was lost and we did not recover it until many years after the war, not until after Papa died and we began to come together, trying to fill the vacuum his passing left in our lives.”

Jeanne describes the importance of her family’s communal eating habits to her mental health. Manzanar has a latent effect on changing the structure of Jeanne’s family, which does not become cohesive again until many years after WWII and then only through further suffering and loss.

“[Papa] didn’t die there [in Manzanar], but things finished for him there, whereas for me it was like a birthplace. The camp was where our lives intersected.”

Jeanne juxtaposes herself and her father. While Manzanar is where she grew into her adult self, it is where Papa lost his old self. The camp is a place of limbo, where father and daughter experience transitions in life.

“And one imagines that the American mainland glittered for him the way it did for all those entrepreneurs who crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific hoping to carve out a piece of it for themselves.”

One of the primary motives for Asian American immigration was the “American dream”—in this case, the prospect of wealth through the gold rush, as well as work building infrastructure. In reality, most Asian immigrants encountered poor labor conditions, low wages, racist barriers to societal advancement, and the inability to own property or become a citizen.

“That’s how I remembered him before he disappeared. He was not a great man. He wasn’t even a very successful man. He was a poser, a braggart and a tyrant. But he had held onto his self-respect, he dreamed grand dreams, and he could work well at any task he turned his hand to: he could raise vegetables, sail a boat, plead a case in small claims court, sing Japanese poems, make false teeth, carve a pig. Whatever he did had flourish.”

Jeanne summarizes Papa’s character—particularly his focus on working hard. Unfortunately, Manzanar signals the end of his role as breadwinner in the family, as he is unable to hold down a job or start a successful enterprise after his imprisonment.

“May thy peaceful reign last long.

May it last for thousands of years,

Until this tiny stone will grow

Into a massive rock, and the moss

Will cover it deep and thick.”

This is the Japanese National Anthem (kimigayo). Papa sings the kimigayo at the end of Chapter 11 after he is called a traitor for defending the YES/YES position of the Loyalty Oath. He cries while he sings it. It is an ode to endurance: Jeanne explains that the stone represents a person’s life. Jeanne ends the chapter noting that Papa’s childhood house had a stone that someone would cover with water every day, eventually forming the moss that would produce small white flowers. The rock represents stability but also highlights the growth that can happen with slow nurturing over time.

“As the months at Manzanar turned into years, it became a world unto itself, with its own logic, and familiar ways. In time, staying there seemed far simpler than moving once again to another, unknown place.”

As in many refugee camps and detention centers, time is distorted in Manzanar and people lack agency. As the years progress, those in Manzanar try to create a sense of normalcy through routine; however, in doing so, they ultimately barricade themselves into camp life. The camp has become their new normal, and the world outside has become a place to fear.

“I sat across the room from her for an hour trying to follow what was going on. It was all a mystery. I had never learned the language. And this woman was so old, even her dialect was foreign to me. She seemed an occult figure, more spirit than human. When she bowed to me from her knees at the end of the hour, I rushed out of there, back to more familiar surroundings.”

Jeanne reflects upon her traditional Japanese dance lessons. She prefers the more American activities since she does not feel like she belongs in Japanese culture and does not understand the language; however, some of her discomfort with Japanese tradition likely stems from internalized shame.

“Woody was that kind of Nisei, anxious to prove to the world his loyalty, his manhood, something about his family honor.”

In the context of Woody’s enlistment, Jeanne provides insight into the importance of family honor, loyalty, and belonging to her brother’s identity. Woody’s concept of loyalty directly contrasts with Papa, who, as an issei, struggles to determine if loyalty to one nation means dishonoring the other.

“What I had to face now, a year later, was the future. I was old enough to imagine it, and also old enough to fear it.”

With the prospect of leaving Manzanar, Jeanne is caught in limbo between possible humiliation in the outside world and a desire to return to normalcy. This inner turmoil reappears after she leaves Manzanar, as Jeanne struggles with feelings of shame and her simultaneous desire to disappear and to be seen.

“All around, you saw these signals of neglect, as if the camp itself were slowly, deliberately disintegrating in order to comply with the administration’s deadlines.”

People begin to leave the camps after they are ordered to close; however, Jeanne and her family do not have a future to look forward to without employment or housing opportunities.

“As we entered Los Angeles, I sat huddled in the back seat, silent, fearing any word I uttered would bring it to life.”

After leaving Manzanar, Jeanne fears what will happen when they return to Southern California. In particular, she is scared of being hated; however, the difficulties she ends up facing are subtler than overt racism.

“In the months to come, because one did have to keep on walking, one desperately wanted to believe that nothing had changed during those years of suspended animation. But of course, as we soon discovered, everything had.”

New challenges post-Manzanar highlight the motif of endurance. Jeanne’s family soon realizes that although they do not experience overt, violent racism, they cannot seamlessly transition into their previous lifestyle. Manzanar has had a lingering effect on the well-being of both the family as a unit and the individual mental health of Jeanne, her parents, and her siblings.

“One of the amazing things about America is the way that it can both undermine you and keep you believing in your own possibilities, pumping you with hope.”

This passage highlights the paradox of the American Dream, which inspires both despair and determination. Jeanne uses this figurative language in the context of Papa’s continual drive to create new enterprises. Unfortunately, his dreams are usually short-lived, as he frequently falls back into the cycle of unemployment.

“I wouldn’t be faced with physical attack or overt shows of hatred, Rather, I would be seen as someone foreign, or as someone other than American, or perhaps not be seen at all.”

Jeanne realizes that the reality of her life post-Manzanar is that her peers will see her as foreign. This greatly worries her and has a tremendous impact on the development of her identity.

“‘Can I belong?’ I asked, then adding as an afterthought, as if to ease what I knew her answer would have to be, ‘You know, I’m Japanese.’”

Jeanne’s use of the word “belong” signifies her feeling that she does not fit in. Here belonging not only applies to the request to join the Girl Scouts, but also to whether a Japanese American girl is “allowed” to belong to that all-American group.

“That bow was the world I wanted out of, while the strutting sequined partnership I had with Radine was exactly how I wanted my life to go.”

Jeanne realizes she wants less to do with the traditional world of her parents and more to do with the world of her non-Japanese friend Radine. This choice is an important turning point for Jeanne’s identity; it departs from Papa’s desire for her to remain involved in traditional Japanese activities and paves the way for her own Americanized interests.

“Easy enough as it was to adopt white American values, I still had a Japanese father to frighten my boyfriends and a Japanese face to thwart my social goals.”

Jeanne paints a dichotomous image, juxtaposing her internal Americanness with her Japanese appearance. This duality shapes her understanding of what it means to belong as a Japanese American in the post-WWII US; she cannot imagine being both Japanese and American.

“It wasn’t the girl in this old-fashioned dress they had voted for. But if not her, who had they voted for? Somebody I wanted to be. And wasn’t. Who was I then? According to the big wall speakers now saxophoning through the gym, I was the girl of somebody’s dream[.]”

This quote is both an explicit reference to the lyrics of the song playing during Jeanne’s coronation and a reference to Jeanne’s inner conflict with her identity. In particular, she wonders who her peers thought she was, speculating that they voted for a queen who does not really exist.

“I half expected that the place did not exist. So few people I met in those years had heard of it, and those who had knew so little about it, sometimes I had imagined that I made the whole thing up, dreamed up. Even among my brothers and sisters, we seldom discussed the internment. If we spoke of it at all, we joked.”

This quote is part of the opening of Part 3, when Jeanne’s family makes plans to return to the camp. The trauma of the camp wears on the family’s ability to process their imprisonment. In particular, the use of humor to discuss the experience may be an avoidance technique.