Farewell to manzanar pdf

Contents

Title Page Contents Copyright Dedication Foreword A Chronology Terms Used in This Book Epigraphs

Part 1 “What Is Pearl Harbor?” Shikata Ga Nai A Different Kind of Sand A Common Master Plan Almost a Family Whatever He Did Had Flourish Fort Lincoln: An Interview Inu The Mess Hall Bells The Reservoir Shack: An Aside Yes Yes No No

Part 2 Manzanar, U.S.A. Outings, Explorations In the Firebreak Departures Free to Go It’s All Starting Over Ka-ke, Near Hiroshima: April 1946 Re-entry A Double Impulse The Girl of My Dreams

Part 3

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Ten Thousand Voices Afterword About the Authors Connect with HMH on Social Media Footnotes

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Copyright © 1973 by James D. Houston Afterword copyright © 2002 by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D.

Houston All rights reserved. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Houghton Mifflin, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing

Company, 1973. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New

York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki.

Farewell to Manzanar / Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. p. cm.

Summary: Farewell to Manzanar; a true story of Japanese American experience during and after the World War II internment [by] Jeanne

Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston [1. Manzanar War Relocation Center. 2. Japanese Americans—Evacuation

and relocation, 1942–1945. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Concentration camps—California.] I. Title.

E184.J3H63 940.54'72'73

73-11267

ISBN 978-0-618-21620-8 hardcover ISBN 978-1-328-74211-7 paperback

For permission to reprint copyrighted material the authors are grateful to the publishers and copyright proprietors: Harms, Inc., for the lines from

“Don’t Fence Me In” on page 91: © Harms, Inc. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of Warner Bros. Music. Mills

Music, Inc., for the lines from “Girl of My Dreams” on pages 162 and 163: Copyright 1927 by Mills Music, Inc. Copyright Renewed 1955. Used By

Permission.

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mailto:trade.permissions@hmhco.com
http://www.hmhco.com/popular-reading
Excerpt from Viet Nam Poems, reprinted from Call Me By My True Names (1999) by Thich Nhat Hanh with permission from Parallax Press,

Berkeley, California. www.parallax.org

eISBN 978-0-547-52861-8 v5.0717

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http://www.parallax.org
to the memory of Ko and Riku Wakatsuki and Woodrow M. Wakatsuki

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Foreword

When we first considered writing a book about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two, we told a New York writer friend about the idea. He said, “It’s a dead issue. These days you can hardly get people to read about a live issue. People are issued out.”

“I know it,” my husband said. “I’m issued out myself. The issue isn’t what we want to write about. Everybody knows an injustice was done. How many know what actually went on inside? If they think anything, they think concentration camps. But that conjures up Poland and Siberia. And these camps weren’t like that at all.”

So we set out to write about the life inside one of those camps— Manzanar—where my family spent three and a half years. We began with a tape recorder and an old 1944 yearbook put together at Manzanar High School. It documented the entire camp scene—the graduating seniors, the guard towers, the Judo pavilion, the creeks I used to wade in, my family’s barracks. As the photos brought that world back, I began to dredge up feelings that had lain submerged since the forties. I began to make connections I had previously been afraid to see. It had taken me twenty- five years to reach the point where I could talk openly about Manzanar, and the more I talked, the clearer it became that any book we wrote would have to include a good deal more than day-to-day life inside the compound. To tell what I knew and felt about it would mean telling something about our family before the war, and the years that followed the war, and about my father’s past, as well as my own way of seeing things now. Writing it has been a way of coming to terms with the impact these years have had on my entire life.

To complete this book we have had to rely on a good deal besides my own recollections. Many people helped make it possible, more than we can name here. We are especially grateful to all the members of the family who shared their memories, and to these friends: Jack and Mary Takayanagi, Don Tanzawa, and Mary Duffield. We are indebted to the numerous writers and researchers whose works have been indispensable to our own perspective on the period. And we thank the University of California at Santa Cruz for a research grant that made it possible to begin.

Because this is a true story, involving an extraordinary episode in American history, we have included a list of dates and laws we hope will

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make it easier to follow. It needs some historical context. But this is not political history. It is a story, or a web of stories—my own, my father’s, my family’s—tracing a few paths, out of the multitude of paths that led up to and away from the experience of the internment. —Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Santa Cruz, California, March 1973

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A Chronology

1869 The first Japanese to settle on the U.S. mainland arrive at Gold Hill, near Sacramento, California.

1870 U.S. Congress grants naturalization rights to free whites and people

of African descent, omitting mention of Asian races. 1886 The Japanese government lifts its ban on emigration, allowing its

citizens for the first time to make permanent moves to other countries. 1911 U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization orders that

declarations of intent to file for citizenship can only be received from whites and from people of African descent, thus allowing courts to refuse naturalization to the Japanese.

1913 Alien Land Bill prevents Japanese aliens from owning land in

California. 1924 Congress passes an Immigration Act stating that no alien ineligible

for citizenship shall be admitted to the U.S. This stops all immigration from Japan.

December 7, 1941 Surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066,

giving the War Department authority to define military areas in the weste