Pearl Harbor was a tragedy that swept all over the US. The naval base was attacked on December 7th 1941. As a result all Japanese figures who lived in America were put in internment camps. The internment camps weren’t at all like camps, when the Japanese arrived to the camps they were nowhere near from being completed. They were rushed into sloppy constructed huts. Japanese americans struggled to survive in these conditions but did many things to get through it. The two characteristics that allowed Japanese-Americans to survive and recover from the internment camps were denial and making the best out of the situation. The characters in Farewell to Manzanar use denial to forget the situation. Firstly, Papa would drink to forget about the war.