Farewell To Manzanar Essay

Farewell To Manzanar written by James D. Houston and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston is about a young Japanese girl who talks about her life in the 1940s Manzanar internment camp during WWII. Reading this novel inspired me to bring awareness and educate others about this lost situation that Japanese American Internees had to face. The book Farewell To Manzanar is about a young Japanese girl’s story of how life was in the internment camps that were caused due to the Pearl Harbor attack. The Japanese internment camps for those who do not know were camps in which the Japanese were housed since the US government did not trust the Japanese after the pearl harbor attack so they separated them from the public. The Japanese American Internees camps began

The War Relocation Authority Act was passed on March 18, 1942, which ordered to “Take all people of Japanese descent into custody, surround them with troops, prevent them from buying land, and return them to their former homes at the close of the war” (This Day In History, History, 2021). The law called Executive Order 9066 was issued by Franklin D. Roosevelt and was passed on February 19, 1942, during World War II. This executive order authorized the United States to force relocation to internment camps for all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States. The US justified its action by claiming that there was a danger of those of Japanese descent spying for the Japanese but more than two-thirds of those interned were American citizens and half of them were children. The process of these relocations to these internment camps was brutal for Japanese Americans. Evacuation orders were placed in Japanese American communities which gave instructions on how to comply with Executive Order 9066. Japanese Americans lost everything from their homes, business, and assets. After the order was issued, the head of the family had to report to get tags for the entire family and report to the relocation centers. Family members only had 1 back in which they had to pack all their belongings and they had six days to dispose of their belongings that they would leave behind. From the relocation centers, they were sent to assembly centers and then to the internment camps. Assembly centers served the purpose of holding evacuees until the camps were completed. This piece of information correlates back to the book because Jeanees’ family had to go through the same process. There was a scene where Jeannes’ mom was packing her dishes and noticed that they did not fit into the suitcase which