1. Farewell to Manzanar is about the Wakatsuki family who were forced to move into an internment camp called Manzanar during World War II. After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, rumors spread of a plot among the Japanese Americans to sabotage the war effort. President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 two months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor authorizing the internment of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans to one of the ten internment camps across the country. These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were imprisoned for up to 4 years in remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards without due process of law. Most of the Japanese-Americans in the camps were U.S. citizen by birth or legal permanent resident aliens. Traditional family structure was overturned within the camps as American-born children were solely allowed to hold positions of authority. Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care, and several were killed by military guards posted for allegedly resisting orders. Some 3,600 Japanese Americans entered the armed forces from the camps along with 22,00 others who lived outside the relocation zone to form the famous …show more content…
The main characters changed over the course of the book. Mr. Wakatsuki went from being a loving, respected, hard-working, prideful, and potential man to angry and bitter who puttered around , had little potential, and lost respect in the eyes of his youngest daughter. He could work well at any task he turned his hand to such as raising vegetables, sailing a boat, pleading a case in small claims court, singing Japanese poems, making false teeth, and carving a pig, but his skill were useless after his life at Manzanar as he was not a U.S. citizen and never finished studying law or dentistry. His scheme for setting up a housing cooperative failed along with his plan of selling dry abalone. He was always drunk and angry at the beginning of his stay in