Farewell to Manzanar

I would read this book because it talks a little girl getting mistreated,its sad but it's still a god book by a long shot.

Book title and author Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, James D. Houston
Title of review: Farwell to Manzanar
Number of stars (1 to 5): 5












Farwell to Manzanar is a really good book. It's about this girl who doesn't know what Pearl Harbor is. She was only seven years in 1942 when her family uprooted her from the family to go to Manzanar internment camp. When she went to the camp there were one-thousand other Japanese people there. But there was a lot of cool stuff there including cheerleaders, boy scouts, and even more. So I wonder how bad it feels like to grow up behind barbed wire fence. The little girl did like to listen to the band sing 'don't fence me in.' The little girl is so beautiful, she is so smart and I think she is the smartest little girl I know. After she decided that she liked the camp she made friends and had a pretty decent life. One thing I don't like is the camp was in the United States.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Okay book

In the book Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuk Houston and James D. Houston, Jeanne is a young, seven year old, girl who was sent with her family to live at Manzanar interment camp in 1942 with 10 thousand other Japanese Americans. This is a true story of a spirited Japanese American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention. The authors do a good job of engaging the reader by having a significant amount of details in the text. For example, on page 76, it says, 'Another nineteen-year-old died five days later.' These details help you understand the story a little bit more. To me, the details are really good and the best thing the authors can do to make the book more interesting. However, I didn't quite understand the beginning of the book until i read the rest of the book. I think that whoever enjoys true stories would really enjoy this book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A classic!

After the tragedy of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, there was a lot of tension in the United States towards Japanese-Americans. The Manzanar internment camp in California was one of the first to open, and the Wakutsuki family was sent there from Long Beach. They were forced to leave and take only the things they could carry. Jeanne was only seven at the time yet she faced such new and unfamiliar challenges. Being interned had emotional and physical consequences on her family, especially her Issei father. This memoir recalls the family's experience.

Learninglfull

Farewell to Manzanar is an exhilarating book to read! This book is non-fiction and very vivid. In my opinion this book will be suitable for anyone. Farwell to Manzanar is about a young Japanese girl with her family and her childhood through Pearl Harbor. It contains her family's frustrations and raging moments that will keep you on the edge of your seat. This nail biting story also includes her school life-boys, friendships, sports, etc. This motivating book is similar to what happened to over 110,000 Japanese family's during the mid 1940's at various camps throughout the United States.


The main character in this tale is about a 7 year old Japanese girl Jeanne Wakatsuki, growing up in the early and mid 1940's in a concentration camp in California, and her getting her life back together again after they leave the camp. Other important characters in this story are papa, mama, and Radine. You will read that papa is very strict and proud about his family's Japanese descent. Mama is very kind and considerate while Radine, Jeanne's first real friend in her life, is brave for what she does throughout the story for Jeanne against the racial people in their community. Jeanne is aroused to get out in the real world again since the any years at Manzanar. Manzanar was where thousands of Japanese and other oriental family's such as Indian, Korean, etc. were forced to move into for years of their life.

People can learn a valuable lesson from this book. Farewell to Manzanar is something that not even words can express! To find out what it's really like to learn the lives of a Japanese family going through a U.S tragedy and their experiences through the years, you'll just have to find out by yourself and read this book.

It was an alright book but it definitely wasn't my favorite.

Farewell to Manzanar by James D. Houston and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston is a nonfiction novel that is written in first person. This novel was published in 1973 by Houghton Mifflin. It took place in 1941 in the internment camps that the Japanese people had to live in. A young girl of the age of seven years old and named Jeanne Wakatsuki was the main character. She had to live in multiple places such as Terminal Island, Ocean Park in California, Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, Owens Valley, Manzanar, and Long Beach throughout the book. The book was pretty good, but was very hard to understand.

Jeanne Wakatsuki had a very tough life. She went through a lot before she got to actually enjoy her life. She got made fun of by the Caucasians and was slightly scared of her own race. The author had a way of making you feel like you were right there through all the family struggles. She makes you feel very upset at the end of the day because you are treated so well and they were treated so badly. Her own dad said, "I'm going to sell you to the china-man," meaning that he was going to give them away. Her father was always drunk and her mother was always being beaten by her father.

This book really inspired me to give the people that had to live in the interment camps sympathy. Jeanne had no clue she was being treated so badly till she grew a little older. When the mother said, "Woody, we can't live like this, animals live like this," it was very upsetting to know that they lived that badly. I had to look up many of the words that used. They were so medically defined that it was kind of hard to understand what they were talking about. Also, it was very detailed about the clothing and camps. I really liked the book except for those few complaints.

Sayonara, Manzanar

This story is about an American born Japanese girl named Jeanne and her family. Due simply to their Japanese ancestry, they were imprisoned in an internment camp in the Owens Valley during WWII, even though Jeanne and her siblings were American citizens by birth. My favorite character in the novella is Jeanne's sister-in-law, Chizu. She is married to Jeanne's older brother, Woody. He is the second eldest son of the family, who was drafted into the 442nd before Manzanar closed. At the time of his deployment, Chizu is a young soldier's wife with two small children to care for, and the only family she is surrounded by is that of her husband. I cannot fathom how difficult life must have been for her to bear.

I have been to the war memorials and museum in Hiroshima, Japan. At the museum I watched a video that detailed the horrors of the war and the affects of the radiation the atomic bomb had afterwards. The monument to Sakura and the thousand paper cranes holds testament to the devastating affects that lasted for many decades after the war ended. Jeanne's story, however, is the flip side of the coin. It spins the interwoven tales of the 110,000 Japanese in America that were affected by the same war. The confusion Japanese-Americans felt just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the lack of privacy in the camps such as Manzanar, the prejudice faced after the camps were closed, and many other aspects of Japanese-American life is touched on in Manzanar. I have felt ostracized by my appearance before as well, and have experienced the same feelings Jeanne described of wanting to fit in, but feeling unalterably different. Her story is one that can be related to on many levels-not just by the people who shared those same moments in history.

I like the concept behind Farewell to Manzanar, and applaud its valiant purpose. However, it is a little watered down for anyone intently interested in the subject and people involved. Its concise nature is best for students in middle school or basic high school English classes. If it wasn't geared toward such a broad audience, I would suggest adding more details to Jeanne's tale.

I would recommend this novella most to the young relatives of the people who were actually in the internment camps. I think it would lend them a better understanding of their relative's past, their history, and a glimmering pinprick of insight into the vastness of what "Manzanar" encompasses. I hope books like this one will help humanity as a whole not repeat our greatest, and most devastating, mistakes.

Farewell to many things

This story is my favorite nonfiction novel to date. It is so real and natural it is like you're watching everything happen. They portray the characters in such a wat that you know who they are from the inside out. This is a great work and I think everyone should read it.

Enlightens readers to the insides of Japanese internment camps.

It's a good thing that I happen to write a review on this for another site, therefore if you don't mind...I shall copy/paste my review from there: If you believe thoroughly that Japanese internment was crucially wrong and yet you do not know much about it, then I definitely especially recommend this to you as it brings you on a personal level with a young girl experiencing the hardships of internment and also exposes the Japanese Americans' daily life in the camps. It is a truly brilliant story, and it is also very well written as you--especially if you are a teenager--can honestly understand the feelings of a youth and how it does not affect them then, but afterwards into their future.

Deprivation of personal freedom

Farewell to Manzanar is about the living conditions in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two. Based on personal recollections, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston relates her story as a 7 year old forced to live in a camp along her family. Farewell to Manzanar is a true story. It is also a web of stories of her, her father, her family, and the multitude of paths that led away from the experience of internment.
Manzanar was a community in California during World War Two. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese American internees. The Wakatsuki family is one of the first to arrive at this unpleasant and humiliating place. Manzanar becomes Jeanne¿s way of life in which she struggles to adapt. For her father it was essentially the end of his life. Not only does Jeanne struggle to fit in with her peers but it is a battle with her father to remain loyal to her Japanese traditions.
Farewell to Manzanar is a story of fear, pride, humiliation, and confusion. It is the journey of a young girl to find herself and attempt to fit in. I found the book to be very interesting and informational. I had never learned about these topics. I have been taught about World War Two and the attack on Pearl Harbor but never in depth about these camps. I hope schools will emphasize more on this topic. This book is very vivid and it allows readers to capture the pain in the experiences of this community.

Reviewed by Taylor Rector for TeensReadToo.com

FAREWELL TO MANZANAR is the chilling autobiography of a Japanese-American girl who survived the interment camps during World War II.

When I began reading this book I had no idea what the "internment" camps were. This is a subject that not many know about and is not a very well-known time in history. "Internment" camps were camps that the American government put together after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor to house all of the Japanese-Americans who lived on the west coast. The people were forced to go and didn't have a choice, even if they were born in America and only had Japanese ancestry. The camps were in the middle of the desert, so that the people wouldn't be able to leave.

At first I didn't like the book very much. But as I kept reading I began to like it. I can't say that I loved it, because I didn't; it's not a "loving" type of story. I enjoyed learning about something that I knew nothing about.

I think all Americans should read this book so that they know that this happened. It is not something that is often talked about, but it should be, so that every American citizen knows about this part that the government played in World War II.

Changing places

There is something about this book that allows you to change places with the main character. Unless you were a Japanese American during the time of World War II, this would not have happened to you, but you feel as if you too, are going through this situation through the author's eyes. The reader can totally see the effects of racism, the unjust treatment of the Japanese Americans, and the ambivalence they felt for their adopted country. The day to day descriptions of life in the Manzanar internment camp are very interesting. It is a quick, engaging, and important book which examines a shameful time in our nation's history that we all need to examine.

pretty good

In the book Farwell to Manzanar the authors do a pretty good job of engaging the reader because they give a lot of detail and they talk about interesting things. Alought at some points during the book it geys a little boring, but usuall after a boring part there is an iteresting part. So in the end the authors do do a pretty good job of engaging the reader. Also, in the book I liked how, while the family was at the camp, it told a lot about what they did in detail and told about their feelings. At points in the book though I got confused. It was confusing when they told about the camp abd how it was set up because I could not quite picture it in my head. The people that I think might enjoy this book would be people whowant to know in detail what happened in World War II to the Japanese and the hard times that they went through.

Courtesy of Teens Read Too

FAREWELL TO MANZANAR is the chilling autobiography of a Japanese-American girl who survived the interment camps during World War II. When I began reading this book I had no idea what the ¿internment¿ camps were. This is a subject that not many know about and is not a very well-known time in history. 'Internment' camps were camps that the American government put together after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor to house all of the Japanese-Americans who lived on the west coast. The people were forced to go and didn¿t have a choice, even if they were born in America and only had Japanese ancestry. The camps were in the middle of the desert, so that the people wouldn¿t be able to leave. At first I didn¿t like the book very much. But as I kept reading I began to like it. I can¿t say that I loved it, because I didn¿t it's not a 'loving' type of story. I enjoyed learning about something that I knew nothing about. I think all Americans should read this book so that they know that this happened. It is not something that is often talked about, but it should be, so that every American citizen knows about this part that the government played in World War II. **Reviewed by: Taylor Rector

pretty bad

this book was so boring! i had to read it for school and it was terrible! and i swear, I LOVEEEE TO READ. it was just really bad.

ok

it was disappointing but hey what can you do about it it really happened. it was boring tho and i don't recommend it unless you like war books.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

grate book

Farewell to Manazar is an interesting and exiting book. So if you like war related books you are going to enjoy reading this book. This book talks about how it was living during World War II. I really love war related books and that¿s the reason I enjoyed this book. When you read this book you can easily tell in is a true story because of how the writer writes the story. There are two sets of characters in this book because two different people are talking about their own story. They both describe how bad the camps were and how they didn¿t have any privacy because the restrooms were out in the open with no doors or walls. They had to be there because they were Japanese and the Americans were tiring to kill them. If you want to know more you are going to have to read the book Farewell to Manazar. I think you are going to love it.

Best Book EVER!

This book really showed me how ¿we¿ (Americans), treated the Japanese when we were bombed, we had the right to think that yes, maybe someone here helped them. But we had no right to put them in those concentration camp or internment camps, whichever you want to call them. They were treated like crap in there, and putting them there destroyed most of their lives. Families split apart. Reading this book made me feel so sad. Jeanne, almost couldn¿t be homecoming queen at her high school because she was Japanese and the teachers were trying to stuff the votes so she didn¿t win because they were afraid that the parents/donators would get mad at the school. I am so glad that this society has changed from being like that. We still need to work at it, but we come a LONG way from WWII.

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

The book that I chose is Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston. I really like this book. The main characters had hard moments in the book. She has suffered a lot. The police took her dad George to jail. When he was on jail, the family moved to California. When they were in California the father came out from jail. Then a war was going to happen. His brother went to war and came back alive. This story is similar to some people¿s stories who live right now in the United States. The parents have sons in the Iraq war right now. Some of the sons have died and others are lost. Jeanne has something in common with the people who are born in the United States and only speak English. Then later they decided to learn Spanish and in school they hear someone talking in Spanish then they are shocked. Like they didn¿t know. Jeanne is Japanese-American and speak English her parents are from Japan. Her teammates at school could not believe it. I recommend this book to others of my teammates because is a cool book and tells about her life. The book starts interesting and finishes interesting. Therefore, that is why I like this book and recommend to others of my teammates too.

My Book Review

The book I read was Farewell to Manzanar. This book is about how a Japanese family was relocated to a different home during World War II because the United States was afraid that Japanese people were spies. This family did many things so that they could get used to being there. This also talks about how the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Japanese were happy because they could go where they wanted to. Some of the family moved out f the country, some stayed, and one of the brothers joined the military. I would recommend this book because it talks about a family¿s struggle through World War II.

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

What is the name of the book and the author? What is this story about? Was it interesting? Is this story worth reading? These are questions, you are probably curious about. Well, you might just find out. For my summer reading assignment, I decided to read the book Ellen Foster, written by Kaye Gibbons. Ellen Foster is the main character. She is an eleven year old girl who lives in the south. She is an orphan. Both her parents died, when she was little. Her mom died from being sick, and taking to many pills. Her dad died from being depressed and being alcoholic. However, throughout Ellen's childhood she lived with different people. Most of the people she lived with were mean to her. As an example, her grandma. Since her grandma hated the husband her daughter married, she took her madness out on her granddaughter, Ellen Foster. However, Ellen Foster was always independent for herself once an adult mistreated her, like her alcoholic dad. Ellen was always struggling with life, and she faced deaths many times. All Ellen wants is a family that loves her and cares for her. In my personal opinion, this book was worth reading. I enjoyed reading every bit if it. This book had a lot of emotional feelings such as losing a mom. Not having a parent can make one feel lonely and sad. Just imagine, a little girl without any of her parents. What would you do if you were her? Would you cry non-stop? Would you runaway? Overall, this book was excellent. Ellen Foster proves any one can live life even with problems and situations like hers. Ellen is independent for her age. I do recommend this book to someone who enjoys reading. Also, for someone who is struggling with life and neeeds motivation. I also recommend this book to someone who likes fiction books, to someone who likes to see a childs point of view, and to a person who is always curious about anything. You just have to read it!