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90 of 96 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very important book, May 21, 2000
I have been thinking about this book more and more ever since I saw the rascist, effusive film "Snow Falling on Cedars". My big gripe with that film was that it made the Japanese Americans look so weak and helpless without white people to rescue them from their predicament. For those of you who disagreed with my review of that film, I strongly urge you to read (or re-read) "Farwell to Manzanar". This is a frank, accurate, and at times heart-breaking, true story of a Japanese family's internment in the camps. The narrative contains several different threads including: 1. The legal and economic injustice done to the author's family and thousands of other Japanese Americans. 2. The day to day life and survival requirements in the camps. 3. The difficulty of coping with generational differences within an interned Japanese-American family. 4. The difficulties and predjudices that Japanese Americans had to overcome in order to rebuild their lives after they were released. Ms. Wakatsuki-Houston's memoir is simple and compelling. She describes her childhood experiences from the objective and mature perspective of an adult, a wife, and a mother. But despite the passage of time her narrative still conveys a great deal of pain and difficulty in coming to terms with her childhood internment at Manzanar. The most interesting part of the book for me was how the author's family attempted to rebuild their lives after the U.S. government robbed and humiliated them. The father immediately started a farming venture whose success was only undermined by unsually adverse environmental conditions. One of the sons served in the military and then resumed the family's fishing business. And the author herself challenged the pedjudiced administration of her highshool by becoming prom queen despite their attempts to thwart her. Contrary to the wishful thinking of "Snow Falling on Cedars", the white people in this book do not come back and redeem themselves. They do not rescue the people they victimized, and they do not receive bows from them. No woman begs the white man for permission to put her arms around him. The people in this memoir endure their mistreatment with strength and dignity. When they are released from the camps, they rebuild their lives on their own without assistance, sentimentality or self-pity. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about a shameful period in American history, and who wants to see how people who are treated unjustly can still survive and move on. But most of all, I recommend this book to people who were taken with the Hollywood version of what happened to Japanese Americans in this country during World War II.
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