Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment

Content Warning: This section discusses the US imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WWII. It also references alcohol addiction, domestic abuse, and racism/xenophobia.

Jeanne was born in 1934 in Inglewood, California. She is the author of this memoir, which spans her life from ages 7 to 38 but primarily tells the story of her coming of age during and after her imprisonment in Manzanar. As Jeanne reckons with the past and present, she weaves her family’s story into the narrative.

In Jeanne’s world, the Fear of the Unknown collides with the development of her Japanese American Identity. With three of her formative years spent in Manzanar, she is simultaneously learning, exploring, and defining what it means to be Japanese as well as American. She realizes that she is attracted to more stereotypically American activities despite her father’s disapproval, and she struggles with the racial prejudices of American society even after leaving Manzanar. In fact, Jeanne in some ways finds life outside Manzanar more difficult than life within it, realizing as she enters adolescence that her “foreign” appearance prevents her from fitting into white American society as she wishes; she simultaneously desires to disappear and to be accepted as she is.