Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of a Japanese-American family's confinement in California's Manzanar internment camp during World War II. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston was seven when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and created the hysteria that forced 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes. She remembers the stress of camp life-the stripping away of dignity and privacy, the withering of parental authority, and the divisive pressure to sign loyalty oaths. She also recalls what she took away from Manzanar after it closed-an odd sense of shame and a fierce determination to be accepted as American.

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston explains that Farewell to Manzanar is her attempt to examine her past and come to terms with the years that she spent in a relocation camp. She tried to deny the past, but when she can no longer avoid the painful memories of the injustice done to her and her family, she revisits the old camp and begins the account of her experiences there.

Discussion Topics

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?
4. There are three semi-fictional chapters in Farewell to Manzanar. Why does Wakatsuki combine fictionalized elements with the nonfiction of a memoir?
5. Discuss the generation gap between Issei immigrants and their Nisei children. How are they different? What characteristics do they share?
6. Wakatsuki never seems bitter about her experience in Manzanar and never directly condemns the relocation policy. Why does she choose not to pass judgment?
7. How does Jeanne's view of Japanese Americans change throughout the work?
8. How does Wakatsuki develop Papa as a tragic figure? Why does she make him so central to her story?
9. What are the chief differences between Woody and Papa? How are they similar?
10. Wakatsuki gives almost no information about the war in the course of the memoir. Why does she choose to leave the war out of her story for the most part?
11. "When your mother and father are having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting?" Ko compares the war between Japan and America to arguing parents. Explain the meaning of this comparison and its impact upon the entire memoir.
12. Compare and contrast the journeys of acceptance made by Woody and his sister Jeanne. How are they similar? How do they differ?

About the Author

Jeanne W. Houston was born in Inglewood, California on Sep. 26, 1934. When Jeanne was only seven (the youngest of the Wakatsuki children), she and her family were moved to Manzanar. Although Jeanne was born in the United States, she was taken to the camp with the rest of her family and treated as a foreigner. Her family lived together at the camp for three years.

After high school, she attended college at San Jose State University where she studied sociology and journalism. There she also met her husband James, whom she married in 1957. James Houston was born on Nov. 10, 1933 in San Francisco, California. His father was a Texas blacksmith and sharecropper. After graduating high school he studied at San Jose College and Stanford University. Jeanne and James Houston live in Santa Cruz, California.

 

Adapted from Sparknotes.com