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| Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, James D. Houston
Publisher: Bantam Books
Category: Book
List Price: $6.99
Buy Used: $1.36
You Save: $5.63 (81%)
New (51) Used (153) Collectible (8) from $1.36
Avg. Customer Rating:  224 reviews
Sales Rank: 3368
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 146
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0553272586
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.54727309794
EAN: 9780553272581
ASIN: 0553272586
Publication Date: November 1, 1974
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp--with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular song except thenation's #1 hit: "Don't Fence Me In."
Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention . . . and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States.
Download Description
The U.S. government's internment of 120,000 Asian Americans in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 is a thorny era that many Americans have chosen to ignore. Farewell to Manzanar is a factual narrative by Jeanne Toyo Wakatsuki and James D. Houston that follows Jeanne, her family, and 30,000 other Asian Americans along a three-decade-long journey of silent denial and racial degradation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 219 more reviews...
 Great book August 25, 2008
The book was very well written and you could actually put yourself in some of the incidents that happened through her life. It is very hard to belief that this discrimination happened in our country less that 75 years ago. Great read.
Satisfaction Guaranteed August 20, 2008
I was very satisfied with the level of customer service that I received from Amazon.com. As a student, I am always on the lookout for ways to save money and Amazon.com has become one of my new favorite websites.
 manzanar July 26, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
my 14 year old daughter, who is a reading fanatic, had to read this book for english over the summer. she said the book was well written but was not entertaining.
Painful Personal Testimony on a Shameful American Act July 26, 2008
I could not believe there were one-star reviews until I read them and saw they were written by kids. Obviously part of their 8th grade class assignment was to write a review of the book for Amazon.com. This book is really not for junior-high level kids, as they will find it boring. And unless they are familiar with Asian-American culture or know somebody who is Asian-American, it will be difficult for them to relate to this book at all. One kid reviewer said the book might have been better if there was violence! Those kids would have been better off watching the Made-For-TV movie that was based on the book.
It is of great interest to those wanting to learn about this shameful part of American history, and for those wanting to learn about Asian American history. As a mother of a half-Asian son, this will definitely be a book he needs to read. I applaud Jean Wakasuki-Houston for writing this book, and to me, it rates up there as a must-read with "The Diary of Anne Frank." Both are important testimonies to the horrors and racism of WWII, and hopefully future generations can learn from them.
This part of American history has been swept under the rug. July 24, 2008
Farewell to Manzanar is the autobiography of Jeanne Wakatsuki, who was seven years old in 1942, when the U.S. government forced Japanese-American families from their homes, and relocated them to internment camps. She tells the story of life at the Manzanar camp, as well as her family's difficulty in resuming a normal life after the camp closed, including her personal struggle to fit in with white kids at school.
Just prior to the internment, Jeanne's father was arrested in Los Angeles County and taken to North Dakota. He was a fisherman, and they charged him with delivering oil to Japanese submarines. During interrogation, he explained that the 50-gallon drums on his boat contained bait, not oil. His interrogator asked, "Who do you want to win this war?" He answered, "When your mother and your father are having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you want them to stop fighting?"
One amusing part of the story is about how the camp residents entertained themselves. "He didn't sing Don't Fence Me In out of protest... It just happened to be a hit song."
Woven into the story are historically significant facts. Ironically, while being held captive as a threat to the country, second-generation Japanese-American men were drafted into the Army. Many accepted the call, and others even volunteered prior to being drafted. However, some fought in court, and a judge in San Francisco ruled in their favor. In a separate case, the Supreme Court ruled in December of 1944 that the government cannot detain loyal citizens against their will. Within the next year, the camps were closed.
This part of American history has been swept under the rug. 110,000 Japanese-Americans were relocated to 10 inland camps. Wakatsuki documents her experience in the form of a relatable, human story.
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