Farewell to Manzanar Chapters 1-5

Part I
Chapter 1

"What Is Pearl Harbor?"

Begins with the main character at the age of seven. Her and her family live in southern California. The main character's father and two older brothers set out to the sea, to go fishing. She wishes them good luck and says her goodbyes while they disappear in the horizon. All of a sudden she sees them returning back to the terminal islands. She finds out that the Japanese just bombed Pearl Harbor. Her father later that night burned his Hiroshima flag, papers, and documents, anything that might suggested any connection with Japan. Further added father is an illegal alien. From then on Japanese families were already beginning to move, at least 500 families. FBI deputies would question each individual, ransacking houses for anything that could be used for signaling planes or ships or indicated loyalty to the Emperor. Soon the FBI arrested Jeanne's father, she had later found out he had be arrested for delivering oil to the Japanese submarines offshore. A year later, her father was released.


Chapter 2

Shikata Ga Nai

She later on moved to Ocean Park, near Santa Monica. Jeanne's family was the only Japanese family in the neighborhood. Late February the navy decided to clear Terminal Island completely. February 25Th they were given 48 hours to clear out of their homes. American Friends Service helped them to find a small house in Boyle Heights, another minority ghetto, in downtown Los Angeles, inhabited by a few hundred Terminal Island refugees. Executive Oder 9066 had been signed by President Roosevelt, giving the War Department authority to define military areas in the western states and to exclude from them anyone who might threaten the war effort. Racial profiling then began, Japanese feared of Caucasians, Caucasians were of them. They had to get on a move, Jeanne's and her family got onto a bus that took them to their destination. They arrived at Owens Valley. When arriving at towards the bus stops, the other Japanese stood silence, waiting for friendly, relative faces. After they exited the buses they were issued army mess kits, and food. ("scoops of canned Vienna sausage, canned string beans, steamed rice that had been cooked for too long, and on top of the rice a serving of canned apricots") That was dinner for them. After dinner they were taken to Block 16, a cluster of fifteen barracks. "The shacks were built of one thickness of pine planking covered with tar paper", "They sat on concrete footings, with about two feet of open space between the floorboards and the ground." "Each barracks were divided into six units, sixteen by twenty feet, about the size of a living room, with one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and an oil stove for heat." They were assigned two of the barracks for twelve people in their family group (number). "We were issued steel army cots, two brown army blankets each, and some mattress covers." If jobs were assigned during war time labor shortages, instead of staying at Manzanar.



Chapter 3

A Different Kind of Sand

Describes the setting around Manzanar, dusty and sand covering the area. They were still continuing on building sixteen more blocks to Manzanar. Skies were clear, but icy gusts of winds would buffer the barracks through the floor boards. Jeanne's mother is getting tired of living in their kind of conditions, but her sons and Jeanne try to make the best of it.



Chapter 4

A Common Master Plan

The War Department was in charge of all the camps at a certain point. They issued "military surplus from the first World War- olive drape knit caps, earmuffs, pea coats, canvas leggings." They were given Typhoid shots, it made younger kids sick with vomiting and fevers. Food would spoil fast even in refrigerators because they would break down. Each block provided its own volunteers. "Three meals a day for 250 people." Camps of the ten, reached to California to Arkansas. Their restrooms were twelve toilet bowls arranged in six pairs, back to back with nothing separating them. "Packed sleeping quarters, the communal mess halls, the open toilets- all this was an open insult to that other, private self, a slap in the face you were powerless to challenge."


Chapter 5

Almost A Family

Food was never always great but there was always enough to fill you up. "10,000 people on an endless promenade inside the square mile of barbed wire that was the wall around our city." There included a camp hospital. Jeanne's father comes back in September 1942. Jeanne's two sister in-laws are pregnant. A first new born has arrived and is named George in honor of Papa's arrival.