Farewell to Manzanar

I chose to read this classic young adult memoir now because my son Gabe is currently teaching it to his 8th grade English classes at his Oakland public school, Life Academy. I have known about it during my entire career as a public school librarian, but somehow had never read it. It was also an interesting follow-on to two adult historical mysteries I read recently, Clark and Division, and Evergreen, both by Naomi Hirahara.

While the fictional Ito family in Hirahara’s mystery novels lived among other Japanese American farmers in early 20th century Los Angeles, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s family had integrated into the communities of west LA. The youngest of ten children, Jeanne was only seven years old when her family was uprooted and sent for incarceration at Manzanar Relocation Camp in the eastern Sierra Nevadas, where one of the most novel things about the experience for young Jeanne was living among only Japanese American people. Writing with her husband James Houston, a prize winning novelist, Houston’s adult perspective on her childhood memories of the camp offer an immediacy and a level of detail that helps this memoir read like a novel. Particularly the character development of her troubled and complicated father Ko, and the depiction of the way her parents’ marriage weathered this family tragedy, give the story depth and the reader empathetic understanding. First published over fifty years ago, this memoir of such an important chapter in California and American history is well worth reading.