Research Paper On Farewell To Manzanar

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“Down in our hearts we cried and cursed this government every time we showered with sand. We slept in the dust; we breathed the dust; we ate the dust.” said Joseph Kurihara, an internee at the Manzanar Internment Camp. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt approved Executive Order 9066 which led to the relocation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, including Jeanne Wakatsuki and her family, in internment camps across the United States. Camp Manzanar, located in California’s Owens Valley, became synonymous with prejudiced discrimination and harsh realities—cramped living conditions, loss of privacy, and depreciation of civil liberties. Through the eyes of Jeanne’s memoir Farewell to Manzanar, readers gain insight …show more content…
Alternatively, it can be argued that Jeanne did not show character development over the course of the novel, but rather she initially lacked the information of why the Japanese were captured, and as she learned about the war she was able to fully grasp Manzanar and give her a new insight into why the encampment of Japanese came to be in the first place. Throughout the duration of the novel, Jeanne goes from being seven years old, to a full grown woman. As she was seven years old when she arrived at the camp, she was deprived of the key knowledge of why the camp initiated, and she was not able to entirely understand the circumstances until she was older and wiser. This idea is visible when the author states “I couldn’t step inside the fence”. I believe in ghosts and spirits. I knew I was in the presence of those who had died at Manzanar” (Houston 190). While Jeanne getting older does play a key role in understanding Manzanar and her Asian-American culture, character development has more of an impact on Jeanne understanding her culture and she could fully perceive the discrimination towards the
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