Farewell to Manzanar

The second world war was not only fought on the frontlines, there was not always

an enemy with a face. Prejudice tore apart families, destroyed lives, and lead to murders and deaths. As the Jews in Germany were persecuted, the Japanese were in the United States. Many of these Japanese had lived in the United States all their lives. In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne W. Houston explains her experiences on an interment camp at Manzanar.

The prejudices against the Japanese forced them to move to interment camps. These consisted of, usually, temporary barracks surrounded by barbed wire fence and guard towers. These barracks were about the size of an average classroom and packed with up to six families. If anything, on could assume that the small space would push the families together, this would be true if they had to stay in the room. Jeanne explained in the book that the smaller children would go out and play all day while the older men would fix up the barracks. The lack of a family meal time, because of the mess halls, also hurt the family structure. The prolonged combination of these led to the disbandment of families, which would later have to be salvaged.

Papa started to drink after he came back from the interrogations. His boats were confiscated, stolen, or repossessed. He hadn't seen his family in months, and when he finally did, it did not do him much good. Even after he left the interment camp he had little money, no job, no house, and nowhere to go. This situation was also true for thousands of other Japanese. They built up lives before the war, which got destroyed, built up lives in the camp, which they were forced to give up, and must once more build up another life from scratch.

After the camps were disbanded the Japanese had to leave, and go back to the 'real world'. Jeanne and her family listened, horrified, to reports of violence. In fact her sister had to escorted to her home by armed guards in fear of getting killed; There was also verbal abuse, one day an old women told Jeanne and her brother to "Go back to your country, Japs." She was also excluded from society because of her race. Luckily Jeanne and her family were never physically attacked.

Not one Japanese person was ever charged of espionage, yet they were still persecuted, and many lives were hurt because of it. In fact the Japanese company of the United States suffered the most casualties.