Theme Of Farewell To Manzanar

The are many characters in the book, Farewell to Manzanar who play an important role. One of the main characters, Jeanne Wakatsuki is a seven year old girl who tells the story of when she and her family were put into the Manzanar concentration camps during World War ll. She’s the youngest of her siblings and her father’s favorite. But over time, she develops a love-hate relationship with her father and tries to figure out ways to cope with her father’s behavior. Another character who’s important is Papa, Jeanne’s father. He’s the head of the Wakatsuki family with ten children and is a Japanese immigrant who moved to the United States. He gets arrested and is put in prison for some time which changes him. Mama, Jeanne’s mother, is very caring

The news reaches the San Pedro Harbor in California and later, the Wakatsuki family is moved to the Japanese ghettos in Terminal Island. They’re moved again to Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. Finally, they arrive at the Manzanar Relocation Center in the desert. At first, the camps aren’t prepared for the Japanese, but it slowly starts to improve after the first year where there’s a school and it becomes better organized. The Wakatsuki family lives there until October 1945. After the war, the family moves to the Cabrillo Homes in Long Beach California where it’s racially mixed. Here is where Jeanne meets Radine and becomes best friends with her. They lastly decide to move to San Jose, California since they’re kicked out of Manzanar. Papa is finally able to go back to working in the farms so he can support his

Papa ends up burning anything that connects him with Japan because the FBI has been looking for potential spies to arrest. Two weeks later, Papa is arrested and isn’t seen until a year later. The family decides to move into Japanese ghettos on Terminal Island without Papa, but are relocated to Boyle Heights shortly after. Finally, they are moved to a camp in Manzanar which is the rising action. There, nothing is prepared for them so, most people have to organize and build the camp themselves. The conditions in the camp are poor and chaotic which doesn’t make the camp very pleasant. Papa finally returns from Fort Lincoln to the Manzanar camp, but has changed. He’s become a changed man, a man who’s cold and an alcoholic. This changes Jeanne’s views on her father. The climax in the story is when the family is free to leave the Manzanar camp. When the Wakatsuki family receives this information, it causes stress on them and a panic because they have no place to go or return to. The family must leave too because all of the camps are shutting down so they must make a decision quickly. The family decides to move into the Cabrillo Homes in Long Beach which is the falling action. Here, Jeanne begins middle school where she has to face the real world and being a Japanese American surrounded by other white Americans. From middle