Farewell to Manzanar Summary – Flashcards

On the morning of dDcember 7, 1941, Jeanne Wakatsuki says farewell to Papa's sardine fleet at San Pedro Harbor in California. But soon the boats return, and news reaches the family that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Papa burns his Japanese flag and identity papers but is arrested by the FBI. Mama moves the family to the Japanese ghetto on Terminal Island and then to Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, which he signs in February 1942, gives the military the authority to relocate potential threats to national security. Those of Japanese descent in America can only await their final destination: "their common sentiment is shikata ga nai" ("it cannot be helped"). One month later, the government orders the Wakatsukis to move to Manzanar Relocation Center in the desert 225 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Upon arriving in the camp, the Japanese Americans find cramped living conditions, badly prepared food, unfinished barracks, and swirling dust that blows in through every crack and knothole. There is not enough warm clothing to go around, many people fall ill from immunizations and poorly preserved food, and they must face the indignity of the nonpartitioned camp toilets, an insult that particularly affects Mama. The Wakatsukis stop eating together in the camp mess halls, and the family begins to disintegrate. Jeanne, virtually abandoned by her family, takes an interest in the other people in camp and begins studying religious questions with a pair of nuns. However, after Jeanne experiences sunstroke while imagining herself as a suffering saint, Papa orders her to stop. Papa is arrested and returns a year later. He has been at Fort Lincoln detention camp. The family is unsure how to greet him. Only Jeanne welcomes him openly. Jeanne has always admired Papa, who left his samurai, or warrior class, family in Japan to protest the declining social status of the samurai. She looks back fondly on the style with which he has always conducted himself, from his courting of Mama to his virtuoso pig carving. Something has happened to Papa, however, during his time at the detention camp, where the government interrogators have accused him of disloyalty and spying. The accusation is an insult and has sent Papa into a downward emotional spiral. He becomes violent and drinks heavily, and nearly strikes Mama with his cane before Kiyo, Papa's youngest son, saves her by punching Papa in the face. The frustration of the other men in camp eventually results in an event called the December Riot, which breaks out after three men are arrested for beating a man suspected of helping the U.S. government. The rioters roam the camp searching for inu, a word that means both "dog" and "traitor" in Japanese. The military police try to put an end to the riot, but in the chaos they shoot into the crowd, killing two Japanese and wounding ten others. The same night, a patrol group accosts Jeanne's brother-in-law Kaz and his fellow workers and accuses them of sabotage. The mess hall bells ring until noon the following day as a memorial to the dead. Soon after, the government issues a Loyalty Oath to distinguish loyal Japanese from potential enemies. Camp opinion about whether to take the oath is divided. Answering "No No" to the loyalty questions will result in deportation, but answering "Yes Yes" will result in being drafted. Both Papa and Woody, one of his sons, endorse the "Yes Yes" position, and Papa attacks a man for calling him an inu, or collaborator. That night, Jeanne overhears Papa singing the Japanese national anthem, Kimi ga yo, which speaks of the endurance of stones. After the riots, camp life calms down and the Wakatsuki family moves to a nicer barracks near a pear orchard, where Papa takes up gardening. Manzanar itself begins to resemble a typical American town. Schools open, the residents are allowed to take short trips outside the camp, and Jeanne's oldest brother, Bill, even forms a dance band called The Jive Bombers. Jeanne explores the world inside the camp and tries out various Japanese and American hobbies before taking up baton twirling. She also returns to her religious studies and is just about to be baptized when Papa intervenes. Jeanne begins to distance herself from Papa, while the birth of a grandchild draws Mama and Papa closer than ever. By the end of 1944, the number of people at Manzanar dwindles as men are drafted and families take advantage of the government's new policy of relocating families away from the west coast. Woody is drafted and, despite Papa's protests, leaves in November to join the famous all-Nisei 442nd Combat Regiment. While in the military, Woody visits Papa's family in Hiroshima, Japan. He meets Toyo, Papa's aunt, and finally understands the origin of Papa's pride. In December, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the internment policy is illegal, and the War Department begins preparations to close the camps. The remaining residents, out of fear and lack of prospects, try to postpone their departure, but eventually they are ordered to leave. Papa decides to leave in style and buys a broken-down blue sedan to ferry his family back to Long Beach. In Long Beach, the Wakatsukis move into a housing project called Cabrillo Homes. Though they fear public hatred, they see little sign of it. On the first day of sixth grade, however, a girl in Jeanne's class is amazed at Jeanne's ability to speak English, which makes Jeanne realize that prejudice is not always open and direct. She later becomes close friends with the girl, Radine, who lives in the same housing project. The two share the same activities and tastes, but when they move to high school, unspoken prejudice keeps Jeanne from the social and extracurricular successes available to Radine. Jeanne retreats into herself and nearly drops out of school, but when Papa moves the family to San Jose to take up berry farming, she decides to make another attempt at school life. Her homeroom nominates her to be queen of the school's annual spring carnival, and for the election assembly she leaves her hair loose and wears an exotic sarong. The teachers try to prevent her from winning, but her friend Leonard Rodriguez uncovers the teachers' plot and ensures her victory. Papa is furious that Jeanne has won the election by flaunting her sexuality in front of American boys. He forces her to take Japanese dance lessons, but she stops taking them after a short time. As a compromise, she wears a conservative dress to the coronation ceremony, but the crowd's muttering makes her realize that neither the exotic sarong nor the conservative dress represents her true self. In April 1972, much later in life, Jeanne visits the Manzanar site with her husband and two children. She needs to remind herself that the camp actually existed, because over the years she has begun to think she imagined the whole thing. Walking through the ruins, the sounds and images of the camp come back to her. Seeing her eleven-year-old daughter, Jeanne realizes that her life began at the camp just as her father's life ended there. She recalls Papa driving crazily through camp before leaving with his family, and she finally understands his stubborn pride.

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, seven-year-old Jeanne Wakatsuki watches from the Long Beach, California, wharf as a fleet of sardine boats prepares to leave the harbor. Her father, whom she calls "Papa," yells more than the other men. He barks orders at his two eldest sons, Bill and Woody, who act as his crew. Papa is aboard the larger of his two boats, the Nereid, which he pays for by giving percentages of his catch to the large canneries on Terminal Island, near Long Beach. Many other fishermen have similar arrangements with the canneries, and they often fish together. Jeanne and her family stand on the wharf and wave goodbye until the boats have nearly disappeared. Suddenly the fleet stops and floats on the horizon like white gulls. Jeanne's mother, whom she calls "Mama," and Woody's wife, Chizu, begin to worry when the fleet turns back toward the port. The other women wonder whether there has been an accident. When the boats are still a half mile offshore, a cannery worker runs along the docks reporting that Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor. Chizu asks Mama what Pearl Harbor is. Mama does not know and shouts after the man, but he is already gone. That night Papa burns the Japanese flag he brought with him from Hiroshima thirty-five years earlier. He also burns any documents that might connect him with Japan. He is worried because he is a non-U.S. citizen with a fishing license, and the FBI has begun arresting such people as potential spies. The family goes to stay on Terminal Island with Woody, but two weeks later, two FBI men arrest Papa. Jeanne thinks the FBI men look like characters from a 1930s movie. Papa does not resist arrest, but walks out tall and dignified ahead of the two men. The FBI interrogates many Japanese and begins searching Terminal Island for material that could be used for spying, such as short-wave radio antennae, flashlights, cameras, and even toy swords. The family learns that Papa has been taken into custody, but the sons are unable to find out where he has been taken. An article in the next day's paper reports that Papa has been arrested for supplying oil to a Japanese submarine. Mama cries for days, but Jeanne does not cry at all. She does not fully understand Mama's grief until she finally sees Papa again a year later.

Soon after Papa's arrest, Mama relocates the family to the Japanese immigrant ghetto on Terminal Island. Mama feels more comfortable in the company of other Japanese, but the new environment of Terminal Island frightens Jeanne. It is the first time she has lived among other Japanese, and she traces her fear to an earlier time, when Papa threatened to sell her to the "Chinaman" if she behaved badly. Mama and Chizu go to work for the canneries that own the island, and the family takes up residence in a barracks alongside the other migrant workers. Jeanne feels uncomfortable around the rough youth who proudly call themselves yogore ("uncouth ones") and pick on outsiders and people who do not speak their language. The other second-graders tease Jeanne for not speaking Japanese, and both she and her ten-year-old brother, Kiyo, must avoid the children's ambushes after school. The family lives on Terminal Island for two months, and on February 25, 1942 the government decides to move the Japanese farther away from the Long Beach Naval Station. The family, including Granny, Jeanne's sixty-five-year-old maternal grandmother, is given forty-eight hours to leave. Mama has to sell her china because it will not fit in Woody's car. When a secondhand dealer insults her by offering only fifteen dollars for the china, she angrily smashes the entire set in front of him. The family settles in the minority ghetto of Boyle Heights in downtown Los Angeles. President Roosevelt has signed Executive Order 9066, which authorizes the War Department to remove persons considered threats to national security from military areas on the West Coast, and rumors begin to circulate about relocation. Mama finally receives a letter from Papa, who is being held at Fort Lincoln, a camp for enemy aliens in North Dakota. The Japanese both comfort themselves and excuse the U.S. government's actions with the phrase "shikata ga nai," which means both "it cannot be helped" and "it must be done." Kiyo and Jeanne enroll in school, but Jeanne does not like the cold, distant teacher, who is the first Caucasian from whom she has felt hostility. The public attitude toward the Japanese soon turns to fear, and a month after the Wakatsuki family settles in Boyle Heights, the government orders the Japanese to move again, this time to the relocation camp at Manzanar, California. Many Japanese accept the move because they are afraid of Caucasian aggression, but some simply see it as an adventure. A bus picks up the Wakatsukis at a Buddhist temple, and each family receives an identification number and tags to put on their collars. Jeanne falls asleep on the bus, nearly half of which is filled with her relatives, and wakes up to the setting sun and the yellow, billowing dust of Owens Valley. As they enter the camp, the new arrivals stare silently at the families already waiting in the wind and sand. The bus arrives in time for dinner, but the Japanese are horrified to learn that the cooks have poured canned apricots over the rice, a staple the Japanese do not eat with sweet foods. After dinner, the Wakatsukis are taken to a wooden barracks in Block 16, where they receive two sixteen-by-twenty-foot rooms for the twelve members of the family. They divide the space with blankets and sleep on mattress covers stuffed with straw. The younger couples have a hard time adjusting to the lack of privacy, and six months later Jeanne's sister and her husband leave to help harvest beets in Idaho. Jeanne does not mind the tight quarters, because it means she gets to sleep with Mama.

The Wakatsukis wake up early the first morning in Manzanar covered in gray dust that has blown through the knotholes in the walls and floor. They have used their clothes as bedding for extra warmth, and nearly everything they own has been soiled. Jeanne and Kiyo find their predicament funny, but Mama does not. Woody calls through the wall, jokingly asking if they have fallen into the same flour barrel as him. Kiyo replies that they have not, joking that theirs is "full of Japs." The children dress quickly, and Woody instructs Jeanne's brothers Ray and Kiyo to cover the knotholes with tin can lids while Jeanne and her sister May sweep the floor and fold laundry. Woody threatens to make the boys eat any sand that comes up through the knotholes. When Kiyo asks about the sand that comes in through the cracks, Woody jokes that it is a different kind of sand and, mimicking Papa's voice, says he knows the difference. The wind continues to blow dust through the floor. Mama asks Woody to cover the cracks. He promises to patch the cracks with scrap lumber, but she is not satisfied, decrying the horrid conditions. Woody promises to make the repair job better and goes out to see what is for breakfast. Kiyo jokes that it will be hotcakes with soy sauce, but Woody says it will be rice with maple syrup and butter.

The Wakatsukis wait in the cold for half an hour for breakfast and eat huddled around the oil stove that Woody has repaired. He begins fixing things, but it is months before the family's quality of life improves. Wakatsuki tells us that the Japanese were not ready for the camps, and the camps were not ready for the Japanese. She says that the Japanese, not knowing what to expect, did not bring enough warm clothing for the April weather and high altitude. The War Department begins issuing World War I surplus clothing, most of which is too large for the Japanese. A makeshift clothing factory is soon set up, and dozens of seamstresses convert the surplus into more practical articles of clothing. Almost nothing works in the camps, and the children are continually sick due to typhoid immunizations and food spoiled by inexperienced cooks and poor refrigeration. Bowel problems known as the "Manzanar runs" become part of daily life for young and old alike. On the first morning, Jeanne and Mama try to use the latrine in their block but discover that the toilets are overflowing onto the already excrement-covered floor. They try another latrine two blocks away. The latrine is like every other latrine in each of the ten camps, which were all built according to the same plan. The toilets are back to back, with no partitions. One old woman sets up a cardboard box around her toilet as a makeshift partition. She offers the partition to Mama, who graciously accepts it. Cardboard partitions become widely used until wooden partitions arrive, but many people choose to wait to use the bathroom until late at night for more privacy. Like many Japanese, Mama never gets used to the latrines because she places a high value on privacy, but she endures them because she knows that cooperation is the only way to survive.

Jeanne notices that after a few weeks, her family stops eating together in mess halls. She remembers that before entering the camp, her family used to enjoy noisy, homegrown meals around a large, round wooden table. Now, however, Granny is too weak to go to the mess hall, and Jeanne's older siblings often eat with friends in other mess halls where the food is better, while the younger brothers make a game of trying to eat in as many different mess halls as possible in a single meal period. Jeanne and Kiyo often eat with other children, away from the adults. Wakatsuki notes that later in the war, sociologists noticed the division occurring within families, and the camp authorities tried unsuccessfully to force families to eat together. But camp life accelerated the disintegration of the Wakatsuki family—the barracks were too small for Mama to cook in, and there was no privacy. Wakatsuki says that the closing of the camps made this fragmentation worse, since the older children moved away and the remaining family members had to eat in shifts in a tiny apartment. She adds that after being released, she wrote a paper for her journalism class about how her family used to catch and eat fish together at their home in Ocean Park. She closed the paper by saying that she wanted to remember this experience because she knew she would never be able to have it again. Back in the camp, a call goes out for volunteer workers, and many Japanese sign up. Jeanne's brothers sign up as carpenters, roofers, and reservoir crewmembers, and Mama begins to earn nineteen dollars a month as a dietician helping the camp cooks. She works in order to pay the warehouse in Los Angeles, where she has stored the family furniture. She worries about Papa, from whom she receives occasional letters, but starts to ignore Jeanne. Jeanne looks for attention elsewhere and begins to observe the other people in camp. In hot weather she watches the 10,000 people walking around the camp at night. She pays special attention to a half-black woman who is masquerading as Japanese to stay with her husband; an aristocratic woman who whitens her face with rice flour; a pair of pale, thin-lipped nurses who look like traditional Japanese kabuki theater actors; and Japanese nuns. The nuns run an orphanage in the camp with Father Steinbeck, who is white, and they nearly convert Jeanne to Catholicism before Papa intervenes. Jeanne is attracted to the stories of saints and martyrs, and spends nearly every afternoon and all day Sunday with the sisters. Walking home in the hot sun, she likes to imagine that she too is suffering with the martyrs. One day, however, she suffers sunstroke and does not go back to her religious study for a month. Just before Jeanne's bout of sunstroke, Papa returns to Manzanar, and the whole family goes out to greet him. Woody's wife, Chizu, is absent because she has just given birth to a son, whom she has named George in honor of Papa's return. When the bus door opens, the first thing Jeanne sees is a cane. Papa is thin, and withered, and he favors his right leg. He and the family look at each other in silence, and only Jeanne has the courage to approach him. She runs to him, hugs his legs, and begins to cry.

Papa continues to use his cane even after he recovers. Sometimes he uses it as a sword to swat at his family, and Jeanne imagines it as a makeshift version of the samurai sword of his great-great-grandfather from Hiroshima. Jeanne sees the camp as the place where her father's life ends and her own life begins. Papa is the oldest son of a samurai family that was stripped of its warrior status when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan. Papa's uncle was a general and persuaded him to enter military school, but he dropped out at seventeen and sailed for the Hawaiian Islands with money borrowed from an aunt. In Hawaii, Papa saw an advertisement for a job. He bought a new suit and went to find out about the job, but on arriving he found that the ad was for work in the sugar cane fields. He soon found a job as a houseboy in Idaho for an American lawyer. After spending five years with the lawyer, he enrolled at the University of Idaho and began preparing for a law degree. He changed his plans, however, when he met Jeanne's mother. Mama was born in Hawaii to a sugar cane worker from Niigata, Japan. Her family moved to Spokane, Washington, after her birth. When Mama was seventeen, she had already been promised to the son of a well-to-do farmer. She met Papa one morning when he was unloading vegetables at a market. Her family did not like him because he lived a fast-paced life, but the two eloped and got married in Salem, Oregon. They moved frequently over the next eighteen years and had ten children. Papa did not finish law school and worked many odd jobs. A few years before Jeanne was born he started farming near Watsonville, California. During the Great Depression he moved to Inglewood, but he then turned to fishing in Santa Monica, where he acquired two boats, a house, and a Studebaker. Jeanne sees her parents' golden wedding anniversary as the climax of her family's happiness at Ocean Park. She recalls that her father stood looking elegant in his double-breasted suit and demonstrated how to carve a pig with a few swift strokes of a cleaver. Jeanne says that her father was not a great man but that he held on to his self-respect and dreams, and whatever he did, he did with flourish. She adds that the other men at the detention camp at Fort Lincoln remember him because he helped the government conduct interviews, taught other inmates English, and gave comic readings of the news every morning. "Whatever He Did Had Flourish" establishes Papa's pride as the defining trait through which we can trace his downfall. Wakatsuki initially portrays Papa as a resourceful, adventurous, and dashing young man whose pride gives him strength of character. His pride manifests itself not only in his anger at his own father's degradation but also in the earnestness with which he lives his daily life, turning out for jobs in a brand new suit. This loving picture of Papa contrasts with Wakatsuki's later, frightening picture of him, after the war and the internment have warped his pride into misdirected anger and resentment. Papa's ultimate failure to fit in to American society is important to Wakatsuki's story because it serves as a counterpoint to Jeanne's own attempts to reconcile her Japanese ethnicity with her American identity. Papa and Jeanne's experiences differ, however, in that Jeanne's struggle leads to her eventual growth and self-realization, whereas Papa's struggle defeats him and leaves him alienated from both his family and his identity.

An unnamed interrogator questions Papa at Fort Lincoln, North Dakota. The interrogator asks if he has had contact with his uncle, who is a general in Japan, but Papa says he has not. He adds that he has never returned to Japan because he is a black sheep in his family. The interrogator asks for the names of Papa's ten children, and Papa names all but Jeanne, saying there are too many to remember. The interrogator accuses him of supplying oil to a Japanese submarine off the coast of California, but Papa says only a foolish commander would voyage so far from his fleet. The interrogator shows him a photograph and asks what was in the two fifty-gallon drums seen on the deck of the Wakatsuki's boat. Papa answers that it was fish guts to attract mackerel into the nets. The interrogator asks him what he thinks of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the American military. Papa replies that he is sad for both countries but that he is sure the Americans will win because they are bigger and richer, and Japan's leaders are stupid. He says he weeps every night for his country. The interrogator asks if he still feels loyalty to the Japanese emperor, but Papa counters by asking the interrogator's age. Papa laments that though he has been living in the United States nine years longer than the twenty-nine-year-old interrogator, he is prevented from becoming a citizen. The interrogator again asks Papa who he wants to win the war. Papa responds by asking the interrogator whether, if his mother and father were fighting, he would want them to kill each other or to just stop fighting.

Papa moves into the crowded barracks with Mama and Jeanne, and does not go outside for what seems like months. Mama brings him meals from the mess halls, and he makes rice wine and brandy with extra portions of rice and canned fruit. He spends day after day getting drunk, cursing, and vomiting, and wakes up every morning moaning. Jeanne believes Papa never goes out because he feels superior to the others, but in the latrine one day she overhears some Terminal Island women whispering about Papa and using the word "inu." Inu literally means "dog" but can also refer to collaborators and informers. The women call Papa "inu" because he was released from Fort Lincoln earlier than the other men and is rumored to have bought his release by informing on the others. When Mama reports the incident to Papa, he flies into a rage, cursing her for disappearing, not bringing him his food on time, and helping to spread the rumors that keep him inside the barracks all day. He threatens to kill her. Mama encourages him to strike, but when Papa raises his cane, Kiyo emerges from the bed where he has been hiding and punches Papa in the face. Papa stares at him in rage and admiration, but Kiyo runs out the door. Jeanne is proud of Kiyo but feels that everything is collapsing around her. Kiyo hides at an older sister's room for two weeks before coming to ask Papa's forgiveness. Papa accepts his apology, but Jeanne's sense of loss grows deeper as Papa continues to get drunk and abuse Mama.

Papa rarely talks about his experiences at Fort Lincoln because of his humiliation at being accused of disloyalty. Other men experience this sense of helplessness and rage, and these feelings eventually culminate in the December Riot, which takes place one year after the Pearl Harbor attack. In the months before the riot, the mess hall bells ring often to signal meetings to demand better food, better wages, and even outright revolt. Some meetings lead to beatings or assassination threats. On the night of December 5, 1942, a group of men attacks Fred Tayama, a leader of the Japanese American Citizens League. The next day, the camp authorities arrest three men for the attack and send them to jail ten miles away in the town of Independence. One of the men is a cook known for trying to organize a Kitchen Worker's Union and accusing the white chief steward of selling food from the camp's warehouses on the black market. His arrest triggers a riot, but Papa refuses to participate. He keeps the family inside their barracks during the riot, and Jeanne can hear the lynch mobs roaming the camp, shouting slogans. Papa calls the rioters idiots, but Mama defends them, saying that they don't want to be treated like animals. The authorities agree to bring the cook back to camp, but by 6:00 p.m., there are 2,000 rioters and the camp security force has disappeared. One group of rioters goes to free the cook, and the other goes to the hospital to finish off Fred Tayama. One group throws rocks at a unit of military police, which responds with tear gas. The Japanese flee. In the chaos, the police open fire with machine guns, killing two Japanese and injuring ten others. Late that night the mess hall bells begin to toll, and Jeanne sees the camp searchlights for the first time. The bells toll all night and do not stop until noon the next day.

Jeanne's brother-in-law Kaz is foreman of a reservoir maintenance crew that must leave the camp on the night of the riots. They are issued ax handles to protect themselves if the rioters discover them cooperating with the administration. They drive to the reservoir, check the water, and set up camp in a small shack where each crew must spend its twenty-four-hour shift. Kaz, lying in his cot, thinks he sees something go past the window. Suddenly the door flies open and four military police storm into the room. They back the Japanese up against the wall at gunpoint, thinking that they have discovered a group of saboteurs. The young sergeant asks what the Japanese are doing, and Kaz explains that they are the reservoir crew and are outside camp on official orders. The sergeant is suspicious of them and asks why they have ax handles. Kaz explains that the ax handles are for protection and suggests that the sergeant go back to camp to verify the story. The reservoir crew and the military police stare at each other in fear until the sergeant returns with clearance thirty minutes later.

In December the new camp director gives a Christmas tree to each family, but Jeanne is disappointed with Christmas because of the poor presents, the wind, and Papa's drunkenness. In February conditions worsen when the government begins to require that everyone over seventeen swear a Loyalty Oath. The oath consists of two yes-or-no questions: the first concerns whether one is willing to serve in the U.S. military; the second concerns whether one will swear allegiance to the United States and renounce allegiance to Japan. The oath becomes a topic of debate in camp, and even Papa emerges from his five-month isolation. He argues with the block organizers who come to his barracks, as well as with Mama, Granny, and Woody. Woody says he would be willing to fight, but Papa argues that a soldier must believe in that for which he is fighting. The Japanese Americans do not know how to respond to the Loyalty Oath. Answering "No No" will result in being shipped back to Japan, but answering "Yes Yes" will result in being drafted into the U.S. military. A third option, relocation, allows families to leave camp if they have a sponsor and are willing to leave the West Coast. The Loyalty Oath is intended to speed up the relocation paperwork and determine which Japanese are loyal enough to serve as soldiers in the war. Many Japanese become very anti-American, but Papa decides to answer "Yes Yes" because he thinks America will win the war and does not want to be sent back to Japan. A meeting is called to discuss a collective "No No" vote, and Papa attends even though the others will call him an "inu" for supporting the "Yes Yes" position. At about 4:00 p.m., Jeanne is playing hopscotch in the wind when she hears a commotion. She hears Papa yelling "eta," meaning "trash," and she sees him tackle another man who is running out of the meeting. Papa has defended the "Yes Yes" position, and the man has called him an "inu." A sandstorm arises, and back inside the barracks Papa is silent. A friend of Chizu's arrives, and she sings the Japanese national anthem, Kimi ga yo, with Papa, who begins to cry. Wakatsuki narrates that the national anthem, which is actually a Japanese poem from the ninth century, speaks of a small stone that becomes a massive rock covered by thousands of years of moss. In Japan, Papa's family had a stone lantern over which they poured a bucketful of water each day to keep the moss growing.

In the spring of 1943, the Wakatsuki family moves to nicer barracks in Block 28 near one of the old pear orchards. Wakatsuki tells us that the Spanish word manzanar means "apple orchard" and that there were once many orchards in Owens Valley, where Manzanar is located. Papa tends the fruit trees, and Mama is closer to the hospital where she works as a dietician. Their new lodgings are twice the size of their old ones and have ceilings and linoleum floors. Papa continues to distill liquor, but he drinks less because he spends more time outdoors. After the first year, the Japanese are allowed to venture outside the fence for recreation, and Papa goes on hikes, looking for driftwood, which he carves into furniture. He also paints, sketches, and even builds a rock garden outside the Wakatsuki barracks, with stepping stones leading up to the door. Life in camp becomes subdued and shikata ga nai, "it cannot be helped," again becomes the motto. Many families plant gardens, the administration begins to operate a farm, and some former professional gardeners build a small park. Manzanar becomes its own world with its own churches, stores, movie theaters, and schools, and many of its residents forget about the war. Papa talks Woody out of volunteering for the military, and Woody works at the general store while he waits to be drafted. Kiyo collects arrowheads unearthed by the strong winds and sells them to old men, and Ray plays on a local football team. Jeanne's older sister, Lillian, joins a hillbilly band called the Sierra Stars. Jeanne's oldest brother, Bill, leads a dance band called the Jive Bombers, singing such hits as Don't Fence Me In. There is a picture of the band in the Manzanar High School 1943-1944 yearbook, Our World, along with photos of cheerleaders and the school play, whose description reads "the story of a typical American home." The last two photos in the yearbook show a watchtower and a woman with her dog walking down a peaceful path outside of camp.

The camp authorities create a high school and elementary school, and Jeanne enrolls in fourth grade. Her teacher is a spinster from Kentucky, but Jeanne says she is the best teacher she has ever had. Jeanne also joins the Glee Club, which gives concerts throughout the camp. The War Relocation Department brings in leaders, mostly Quakers, to run a recreation program. On weekends the leaders organize hiking trips to the recently built campgrounds in the hills outside of camp. One leader, a Quaker girl named Lois, has a crush on a Japanese boy, and the two arrange an overnight camping trip for the younger girls in order to spend time together. Jeanne enjoys the occasional excursions but is afraid of spending too much time outside the compound. Jeanne begins taking baton-twirling lessons, practices for months, and eventually joins the baton club at school. Wakatsuki wonders why she was so attracted to such an all-American activity and compares it to her experience taking Japanese dance lessons from an old geisha—a Japanese woman trained to entertain men—in camp. The geisha teaches traditional odori dancing to young girls who want to participate in the obon festival honoring dead ancestors, but Jeanne does not understand the geisha's traditional attitudes and Japanese dialect. Two girls in the class tell Jeanne that a good dancer must use hair tonic on her face, put cold cream in her hair, and never wear underpants, but Mama tells her the girls are teasing. Jeanne also tries taking ballet lessons, but she is unimpressed by the out-of-shape teacher and her daikon ashi, which refers to horseradish-shaped legs. Disappointed, Jeanne returns to her study of religion with the nuns and longs to be baptized in a white gown and veil. When she announces her intention to Papa, he gets angry and refuses her wishes on the grounds that she will be unable to marry a Japanese boy. One of the nuns is a friend of Papa's and tries to reason with him, but he says Jeanne is too young. Jeanne decides she hates Papa and returns to baton twirling.

In her later life, Wakatsuki concedes that Papa was right to protest her being baptized at a young age. At the time of his refusal, however, Jeanne cannot forgive him and feels herself drifting farther and farther away from him. Jeanne's oldest sister, Eleanor, has returned to the camp because her husband has been drafted, and she is in the camp hospital giving birth. The family is worried because two of Jeanne's older sisters hemorrhaged badly during childbirth, and blood plasma is in short supply. One sister was saved by a blood transfusion from Woody, but the other bled to death. Eleanor is in her second day of labor, and Mama and Papa take turns sitting with her. On the afternoon of the second day, Mama runs across the firebreak, a patch of cleared land, shouting for Papa. Papa is afraid and runs to meet her, but the news is good: Eleanor has given birth to a boy. Both Mama and Papa begin to cry, but Jeanne is strangely detached. She feels invisible as she watches her parents talk tenderly to each other in the middle of the firebreak. Mama and Papa become even closer in the following months, but like many of the other Japanese, most of the older Wakatsuki children decide to relocate or join the military. By 1944, only 6,000 people remain in the camp, and most are children or elderly persons. Eleanor moves back to Reno and stays with friends. Woody is drafted in August 1944, and despite Papa's suggestion that he refuse to serve, he reports for duty when his unit is called up in November. The whole family goes to see him off, and although Jeanne does not understand where he is going, she feels the way she did when the FBI took Papa away. Jeanne remembers the day they waved goodbye to the fleet on the wharf in San Pedro Harbor, but now there are 500 other proud Japanese waving goodbye. The all-Nisei 442nd Combat Regiment that Woody joins is famous for its valor in Europe, and one mother in camp has recently received a Congressional Medal of Honor for a son killed in Italy. As more and more families are split up by the departures, people begin to worry about what will happen to them after the war.

In December 1944, in the last of three cases brought against the camps, the Supreme Court rules that the camps are illegal. The first case is brought by a Nisei university student, Gordon Hirabayashi, who violated the curfew imposed in 1942, but the Supreme Court upholds the War Department's restrictions on the movements of the Japanese. The second case is brought by Fred Korematsu, who evaded the removal to Manzanar and underwent plastic surgery in order to stay with his white girlfriend. Korematsu's case protests the fact that no German Americans or Italian Americans were relocated, but again the Supreme Court rules in favor of the army's evacuation policy. The third suit is brought by a twenty-one-year-old Nisei named Mitsue Endo, who challenges the legality of the government's detaining loyal citizens against their will. The Supreme Court is forced to decide in her favor, and the army, anticipating the decision, announces that it will close the camps in the next twelve months. The Japanese response to the decision is far from joyful, as many of Manzanar's inhabitants have no homes to which to return, and wartime propaganda has turned public opinion against them. Prejudiced groups such as No Japs Incorporated and The Pacific Coast Japanese Problem League even try to block Japanese resettlement on the West Coast. Many Japanese fear leaving the camps, but the government insists that the camps close. Most Japanese have few problems resettling, but rumors of attacks on returning Japanese fuel the fears of those remaining in camp. Jeanne is confused because she has always associated the world outside with good things like the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. Now, however, she begins to prepare herself for what was once just an unnamed ache: being hated. Most of the older Wakatsuki children move to New Jersey, though they all realize that Papa will never move back east. Jeanne compares him to a freed black slave who does not know what to do with his freedom because slavery is all he has ever known.

In June 1945, the schools close and the high school produces a final yearbook, Valediction 1945, bearing a photo of a hand squeezing pliers on a length of barbed wire. Cultivation of the farm stops, and the administration auctions off the equipment. The army announces that the camps will close by December 1, and families who do not leave will be scheduled for resettlement, either to a place of their choosing or to their former communities. Papa is stubborn and chooses to let the government arrange for the Wakatsuki family's resettlement. His boats are gone, and a new law has made it illegal for Issei to hold commercial fishing licenses. He spends his time reading the news of the war and relocation with disgust. Papa and Mama regret not leaving sooner because there is no more housing available, and Mama's friend says that the difficulties the Japanese Americans experienced when they were evacuated in 1942 are starting again. Jeanne's parents argue about who is to blame. Mama asks Jeanne for a back massage, but Papa insists that he give it. Mama has not seen a doctor because there are too many patients, and she repeats her friend's comment that it is like 1942 all over again. Wakatsuki notes that the barracks are slowly being deserted and that the moss in Papa's rock garden has dried out. Papa reports that block leaders are petitioning the administration to keep the camp open until everyone has a place to stay. He plans to ask the government for a loan so that he can organize a cooperative of returning Japanese to build a housing project. He feels the government owes it to returning Japanese, but neither he nor Mama have much hope for the plan's success. On August 6, 1945, the United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, ending the war and any hopes of staying in the camps. The newspapers print photos of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, but few people realize the magnitude of what has happened. A week later, Americans dance in the street at the news of the Japanese surrender, and Japanese in the camps rejoice that they are no longer the enemy. Papa reflects on his now-departed children and his family in Hiroshima. As busloads of people leave the camp, Papa continues reading the newspaper and waiting for his turn to leave the camp, which finally comes in October 1945.

Woody visits Papa's family outside of Hiroshima nearly a year after the atomic bomb is dropped, and Toyo, his great-aunt, shows him a graveyard where the gravestones are tilted from the bomb blast. One member of the family has been lost, but Toyo does not want to talk about it. She explains that she has brought Woody to the graveyard to show him where his father was buried in 1913. Woody protests that his father is still alive and well in California, but Toyo explains that when the family had no word from him for nine years, they decided he was dead and placed a gravestone for him in the graveyard. She says her happiness at hearing that he is alive has erased the trauma that the war put her through. Woody has been afraid to visit his father's family in Hiroshima because he is an American Nisei and part of the occupying American army. Finally, however, he decides to go bearing a gift of fifty pounds of sugar, which is in short supply due to inflated black market prices. His family immediately sees past his American haircut and smile, and sees only that he is his father's son. They accept him instantly and welcome his gift with only slight embarrassment. The family's elegant country house is bare except for a few mats and an altar, but Toyo bears herself with dignity. They eat a special meal on nice porcelain, drink precious sake, and Woody sleeps under their finest bedding. He is proud to discover that Papa's stories of his family's nobility are true and imagines that Papa would be proud of how they received Woody. Just as he is falling asleep, he feels a presence near him. It is Toyo, kneeling beside him and crying. She says he looks just like Papa, she and quickly leaves. Woody conjures up an image of Papa and is amazed at the resemblance between Papa and Toyo. In seeing her, he understands Papa's pride and wishes he had asked Toyo about him. He decides to ask her the next day and to climb the hill Papa used to climb.

A few days before leaving Manzanar, Papa decides that the family must leave in style. Despite Mama's protests, he walks to the nearby town of Lone Pine to buy a car. Papa prefers unique cars and returns with a midnight blue Nash sedan with a dashboard gearshift. It takes Papa four days and three trips to transport the remaining nine members of the family back to Long Beach. The car breaks down nearly every hundred miles, but Papa always manages to fix it. Jeanne compares the overpacked car to an Oklahoma family moving west during the Great Depression. Papa drinks all the way back to Los Angeles but sobers up just before entering the city, as if he is waiting for an attack. Jeanne is afraid of the word "hate," which she has heard her family using, and imagines hate as a black cloud descending on her. But when they enter the city, there is no sign of hatred, and it seems as if nothing has changed. Jeanne compares the trip home to a trip through a time machine. There is little housing available to the 60,000 returning Japanese, and the Wakatsukis have a hard time finding a place to live. The American Friends Service helps them find a three-bedroom apartment at the Cabrillo Homes housing project in Long Beach. For the first time in three years, they have a kitchen and toilet, but most of the family furniture has disappeared from storage, and Papa's fishing boats are nowhere to be found. Papa maintains hope by clinging to his plan for a Japanese housing collective, and Mama goes to work in a cannery to support the family because Papa is too proud to take such a job. Jeanne's fear of the dark cloud of hatred slowly recedes.

Jeanne enters sixth grade and finds her teacher warm and kind. When she is asked to read aloud and does so, however, the children stare, and one girl, Radine, comments that she didn't know Jeanne could speak English. Jeanne is stunned that the girl can doubt her ability to speak English and suddenly realizes that having a Japanese face will not cause people to attack her but will simply make people see her as foreign. She begins to wish she could become invisible. She blames the wartime deportation of 110,000 Japanese on both white society's inability to see Japanese people as individuals and the Japanese acceptance of this attitude. Her desire to disappear conflicts with her need to be accepted, and she becomes involved in academics, sports, and student government. Outside of school, however, Jeanne learns that she cannot be friends with certain children because their parents will not accept her. Jeanne takes this rejection quietly, but is dissatisfied with her school activities. She asks Radine if she can join the Girl Scouts, but Radine's mother, who is assistant troop leader, will not allow her to do so. Jeanne does not blame Radine for her mother's reaction, and the two become close friends. Radine even stands up for Jeanne in public. Jeanne teaches Radine how to twirl a baton and imagines herself as a majorette leading a band. In the fall, the two girls audition to be baton twirlers for a local Boy Scouts drum and bugle corps, and both are accepted. Jeanne is made majorette and leads the band in a white outfit with a gold braid. She soon realizes that her acceptance in the Boy Scouts band is partly because the boys and their fathers like to see young girls performing in tight outfits and short skirts. She learns that her sexuality is a tool she can use to gain acceptance. Woody and Ray come back on leave from the military, and though they tease Jeanne about her skinny legs, which they call "gobo ashi," they are actually quite proud of her. Papa does not share their pride and wants Jeanne to become more Japanese. His housing project has failed, and Jeanne has lost respect for him because they are still in the cramped apartment where they must eat in shifts. Papa tries to fish for abalone with Woody off the coast of Mexico, but the enterprise fails when worms attack the drying fish. Papa begins to rely on Woody, who has grown in stature since his visit to Japan and who, as a citizen, can easily cross borders and obtain fishing licenses. Jeanne loses even more respect for Papa because of his continual heavy drinking and refusal to conform to American ways. At a PTA awards dinner, he embarrasses Jeanne by overdressing and bowing to the gathered crowd of parents in Japanese fashion. Jeanne begins to see him as unforgivably foreign.

Jeanne shuns Papa's Japanese ancestry and embraces her friendship with Radine. Radine's parents are poor whites from Texas, and growing up together in an ethically mixed ghetto, Radine and Jeanne are almost socially equal and become best friends. Their relationship changes, however, when they move to Long Beach Polytechnic High School. Radine is asked to join sororities from which Jeanne is barred. Boys flirt with Jeanne but always ask Radine to the dances instead. The harshest blow is that Radine is promoted to song girl in the band, while the band teacher must fight with the administration even to name Jeanne majorette. Jeanne is demoralized by Radine's success because she knows the two of them share so many qualities, even their taste in boys. Jeanne is ashamed that her Japanese face and Japanese father prevent her from dating the boys she likes, but she does not want to change her face. She wants to be accepted. She begins to have recurring dreams about a blonde, blue-eyed girl being admired in a room full of people as she, Jeanne, watches through a window. Jeanne loses interest in school, begins hanging out on the streets, and considers dropping out. One day, Papa nearly kills himself when he gets drunk on whiskey and homemade wine, and he finally gives up drinking to begin farming again. In 1951 he moves the family to the Santa Clara Valley outside of San Jose and begins sharecropping a hundred acres for a strawberry farmer. Jeanne is a senior in high school, but she tries to start over in the new school. The following spring, her homeroom nominates her to be carnival queen. On election day, instead of dressing like a typical 1950s bobbysoxer, Jeanne dresses in an exotic sarong with her hair down and a hibiscus flower behind her ear. The applause and cheers indicate that she will win by a landslide, but her friend Leonard Rodriguez, who helps out in the office, reports that the teachers are trying to stuff the ballot box to prevent her from winning. Jeanne is afraid to confront them, but Leonard does it for her, exposing the teachers and saving Jeanne's victory. Papa is angry that Jeanne has won, and even angrier that she used her sexuality to entice white boys. He is worried about how American Jeanne has become and afraid that she will end up marrying a white boy, so he forces her to take Japanese dance lessons at a Buddhist temple in exchange for permitting her to be the carnival queen. She quits after only ten lessons, but as a compromise, she decides to wear a conservative dress for the coronation ceremony instead of one of the strapless dresses that other girls are wearing. On coronation night, the other girls compliment Jeanne on her dress, but when she enters the gym, the crowd begins to murmur. Jeanne feels uncomfortable in her dress and realizes her mistake in trying to be someone she is not. She understands that her Japanese face will still keep her from being invited to the white girls' reception after the ceremony, and she begins to wonder who she really is.

Jeanne is the first of her family to graduate from college and the first to marry a non-Japanese person. That most Japanese do not talk about Manzanar and that many non-Japanese have never heard of it make her wonder if she imagined the whole thing. Her family rarely talks about the camp, and some experiences remain secret, such as when an old woman spat on Jeanne and Kiyo and called them "dirty Japs." In 1966, Jeanne meets a white photographer who had worked at Manzanar, and though at first she finds it difficult, she soon begins to talk about the camp with the woman. In April 1972, Jeanne and her husband visit the ruins of Manzanar with their three children. She is surprised that Manzanar could be located so near a highway filled with bikers and vacationers headed for the mountains. They finally spot the stand of elms and fruit trees that mark the ruins of the camp. During the internment, Manzanar was the largest town between Reno and Los Angeles, but now only a few buildings remain. Inside the camp, they notice a white obelisk marking twelve graves. Jeanne thinks of her mother, who died seven years earlier, and begins to feel and hear the presence of those who once lived at Manzanar. They explore the site and discover small rock gardens created by Issei men like her father. They also discover the remains of a small park, which ends suddenly in tumbleweeds and a bare mound. Jeanne looks at the ruins as she would an archeological site and notices the outlines and patterns of a city. She finds a ring of stones where the American flag was raised each morning, but she is disturbed that the date on the inscription is marked a.d., as if the mason intended his work to endure for centuries. She crosses the windy firebreak, and with the wind, the sound of the voices grows. She closes her eyes and imagines that nothing has changed. She hears laughter and the singing of the Glee Club, and sees old men burning orange peels to keep away mosquitoes. She looks for the site of her former home in Block 28 and locates the orchard next to which her family used to live. Jeanne watches her eleven-year-old daughter, who is the same age Jeanne was when the camps closed. She realizes that her life really began at the camp, just as Papa's life ended there. Since leaving the camp, she has nearly succeeded in suppressing her memory of it, but she occasionally hears her mother's voice saying that the difficulty is starting over. Now that she has visited Manzanar, she no longer wants to lose it but feels she can finally say "farewell" to it. Just before leaving, Jeanne uncovers a stepping-stone next to a small rock garden. She imagines it is the garden Papa built and sees an image of him sitting on the porch tending to Mama's sore back. She sees a wildness in his eyes that takes her back to the day he bought the car to move the family back to Los Angeles. He is drunk and driving the car on two flat tires. He makes Mama and the girls get in the car and speeds around the camp, swerving and yelling at the departing families not to miss their bus. Jeanne is afraid, but she takes comfort in Papa's madness and suddenly has complete faith that he will get them past the dark cloud of hatred that awaits them in the outside world.