Farewell To Manzanar Research Paper

War has a significant impact on anyone, but especially on young people. In the memoir Farewell to Manzanar and The Diary of a Young Girl, this becomes quite clear to readers. Farewell to Manzanar follows Jeanne Wakatsuki, who reflects on and narrates her experiences before, during, and after the Japanese internment in WWII. The author of The Diary of a Young Girl, however, did not survive the war. Written by Anne Frank during her teenage years hiding from the Nazis in the Netherlands, the diary details her day-to-day life in the Secret Annex - the house where she and her family took refuge. Both Wakatsuki’s and Frank’s adolescences weregreatly affected by the wartime environment - their identity formation was interrupted, they experienced

During WWII, anti-Japanese propaganda and discrimination were extremely common and impacted Jeanne, eventually leading her to dislike her own identity and feel that she was “wrong” for existing as a Japanese person. This is evident on page 130 of Farewell to Manzanar, as Wakatsuki reflects, “That continuous, unnamed ache I had been living with was precise and definable now. Call it the foretaste of being hated. I knew ahead of time that if someone looked at me with hate, I would have to allow it, to swallow it, because something in me, something about me deserved it.” The constant anti-Japanese belittling that the Wakatsukis faced before, during, and after internment caused Wakatsuki to, firstly, become deeply affected by the hate speech and actions around her. She became angry and excluded because of it. Secondly, the extreme propaganda and hate led her to believe that she was indeed “wrong” for being Japanese and that she deserved her internment. This interrupted her identity formation which is essential for an adolescent to have - identity formation that comes without thinking you are wrong for being who you are. From this, readers can clearly see the devastating influence of a wartime environment on identity formation in adolescents, and how it will follow them their whole

Frank, who never had a strong relationship with her mother, finds it nearly impossible to connect with and love Mrs. Frank when it seems like she’s constantly criticizing her every move. The tension between the two became extremely noticeable during a diary entry from April 2, 1943. “Just as I shrink at her hard words, so did her heart when she realized that the love between us was gone.” (Frank 77) states Frank, making it clear to readers that the mother-daughter relationship has been ruined. What’s more, on January 5, 1944, Frank remarks that she imagines a mother as “a woman who…does not laugh at me if I cry about something…like ‘Mums’ does” (Frank 129). Frank notes that the “hard words” and teasing apathy of her mother have damaged their relationship immensely - so much that she doesn’t even see Mrs. Frank as her mother. These conflicts have been spurred by the family’s situation. Living in close quarters and seeing no one but your family for an extended period of time is bound to cause arguments, and the Franks are no exception. The stress and cramped conditions of the Secret Annex definitely contribute to this falling-out. The Diary of a Young Girl provides an excellent example of how adolescents’ relationships with their parents are damaged during