7/4/2021 Print Preview
https:
ng.cengage.com/static/n
ui/evo/index.html?deploymentId=552950 XXXXXXXXXX&dockAppUid=101&eISBN= XXXXXXXXXX&id=11… 1/6
1
2
3
4
Chapter 35: Na
ation: 35-3 A
ival at Manzanar
Book Title: Steps to Writing Well with Additional Readings
Printed By: Dwight Bargainer ( XXXXXXXXXX)
© 2017 Cengage Learning, Cengage Learning
35-3 A
ival at Manzana
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston
Born in California, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston was seven years old when, during World Wa
II, her family was moved to a Japanese-American internment camp, where they were held
for four years. In collaboration with her husband, novelist James D. Houston, she recounts
these experiences in Farewell to Manzanar (1973), from which this excerpt is taken.
Individually and together, the couple has written a variety of books, films, and magazine
articles. Wakatsuki Houston’s most recent work is The Legend of Fire Horse Woman (2004);
Houston’s is A Queen’s Journey (2011).
In December of 1941 Papa’s disappearance didn’t bother me nearly so much as
the world I soon found myself in.
He had been a jack-of-all-trades. When I was born he was farming nea
Ingelwood. Later, when he started fishing, we moved to Ocean Park, near Santa
Monica, and until they [the FBI] picked him up, that’s where we lived, in a big
frame house with a
ick fireplace, a block back from the beach. We were the only
Japanese family in the neighborhood. Papa liked it that way. He didn’t want to be
labeled or grouped by anyone. But with him gone and no way of knowing what to
expect, my mother moved all of us down to Terminal Island. Woody already
lived there, and one of my older sisters had ma
ied a Terminal Island boy.
Mama’s first concern now was to keep the family together; and once the wa
egan, she felt safer there than isolated racially in Ocean Park.
But for me, at age seven, the island was a country as foreign as India or Arabia
would have been. It was the first time I had lived among other Japanese, or gone
to school with them, and I was te
ified all the time….
At the time it seemed we had been living under this reign of fear for years. In fact,
we lived there about two months. Late in Fe
uary the navy decided to clea
Terminal Island completely. Even though most of us were American-born, it was
dangerous having that many Orientals so close to the Long Beach Naval Station,
on the opposite end of the island. We had known something like this was coming.
But, like Papa’s a
est, not much could be done ahead of time. There were four of
us kids still young enough to be living with Mama, plus Granny, her mother, sixty-
five then, speaking no English, and nearly blind. Mama didn’t know where else
javascript:
7/4/2021 Print Preview
https:
ng.cengage.com/static/n
ui/evo/index.html?deploymentId=552950 XXXXXXXXXX&dockAppUid=101&eISBN= XXXXXXXXXX&id=11… 2/6
5
6
7
8
9
10
she could get work, and we had nowhere else to move to. On Fe
uary 25 the
choice was made for us. We were given forty-eight hours to clear out.
The secondhand dealers had been prowling around for weeks, like wolves,
offering humiliating prices for goods and furniture they knew many of us would
have to sell sooner or later. Mama had left all but her most valuable possessions
in Ocean Park, simply because she had nowhere to put them. She had
ought
along her pottery, her silver, heirlooms like the kimonos Granny had
ought from
Japan, tea sets, lacquered tables, and one fine old set of china, blue and white
porcelain, almost translucent. On the day we were leaving, Woody’s car was so
crammed with boxes and luggage and kids we had just run out of room. Mama
had to sell this china.
One of the dealers offered her fifteen dollars for it. She said it was a full setting fo
twelve and worth at least two hundred. He said fifteen was his top price. Mama
started to quiver. Her eyes blazed up at him. She had been packing all night and
trying to calm down Granny, who didn’t understand why we were moving again
and what all the rush was about. Mama’s nerves were shot, and now Navy jeeps
were patrolling the streets. She didn’t say another word. She just glared at this
man, all the rage and frustration channeled at him through her eyes.
He watched her for a moment and said he was sure he couldn’t pay more than
seventeen fifty for that china. She reached into the red velvet case, took out a
dinner plate and hurled it at the floor right in front of his feet.
The man leaped back shouting, “Hey! Hey, don’t do that! Those are valuable
dishes!”
Mama took out another dinner plate and hurled it at the floor; then another and
another, never moving, never opening her mouth, just quivering and glaring at the
etreating dealer, with tears streaming down her cheeks. He finally turned and
scuttled out the door, heading for the next house. When he was gone she stood
there smashing cups and bowls and platters until the whole set lay in scattered
lue and white fragments across the wooden floor.
The American Friends Service helped us find a small house in Boyle Heights,
another minority ghetto, in downtown Los Angeles, now inhabited
iefly by a few
hundred Terminal Island refugees. Executive Order 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. There was a lot of talk about internment, or moving inland, o
something like that in store for all Japanese Americans. I remember my
others
sitting around the table talking very intently about what we were going to do, how
7/4/2021 Print Preview
https:
ng.cengage.com/static/n
ui/evo/index.html?deploymentId=552950 XXXXXXXXXX&dockAppUid=101&eISBN= XXXXXXXXXX&id=11… 3/6
11
12
13
14
we would keep the family together. They had seen how quickly Papa was
emoved, and they knew now that he would not be back for quite a while. Just
efore leaving Terminal Island Mama had received her first letter, from Bismarck,
North Dakota. He had been imprisoned at Fort Lincoln, in an all-male camp fo
enemy aliens.
Papa had been the patriarch. He had always decided everything in the family.
With him gone, my
others, like councilors in the absence of a chief, wo
ied
about what should be done. The ironic thing is, there wasn’t much left to decide.
These were mainly days of quiet, desperate waiting for what seemed at the time
to be inevitable. There is a phrase the Japanese use in such situations, when
something difficult must be endured. You would hear the older heads, the Issei,
telling others very quietly, “Shikato ga nai” (It cannot be helped). “Shikata ga nai”
(It must be done).
Mama and Woody went to work packing celery for a Japanese produce dealer.
Kiyo and my sister May and I enrolled in the local school, and what sticks in my
memory from those few weeks is the teacher—not her looks, her remoteness. In
Ocean Park my teacher had been a kind, grandmotherly woman who used to sail
with us in Papa’s boat from time to time and who wept the day we had to leave. In
Boyle Heights the teacher felt cold and distant. I was confused by all the moving
and was having trouble with the classwork, but she would never help me out. She
would have nothing to do with me.
This was the first time I had felt outright hostility from a Caucasian. Looking back,
it is easy enough to explain. Public attitudes toward the Japanese in California
were shifting rapidly. In the first few months of the Pacific war, America was on
the run. Tolerance had turned to distrust and i
ational fear. The hundred-year-old
tradition of anti-Orientalism on the west coast soon resurfaced, more vicious than
ever. Its result became clear about a month later, when we were told to make ou
third and final move.
The name Manzanar meant nothing to us when we left Boyle Heights. We didn’t
know where it was or what it was. We went because the government ordered us
to. And, in the case of my older
others and sisters, we went with a certain
amount of relief. They had all heard stories of Japanese homes being attacked, of
eatings in the streets of California towns. They were as frightened of the
Caucasians as Caucasians were of us. Moving, under what appeared to be
government protection, to an area less directly threatened by the war seemed not
such a bad idea at all. For some it actually sounded like a fine adventure.
7/4/2021 Print Preview
https:
ng.cengage.com/static/n
ui/evo/index.html?deploymentId=552950 XXXXXXXXXX&dockAppUid=101&eISBN= XXXXXXXXXX&id=11… 4/6
15
16
17
18
Our pickup point was a Buddhist church in Los Angeles. It was very early, and
misty, when we got there with our luggage. Mama had bought heavy coats for all
of us. She grew up in eastern Washington and knew that anywhere inland in early
April would be cold. I was proud of my new coat, and I remember sitting on a
duffel bag trying to be friendly with the Greyhound driver. I smiled at him. He
didn’t smile back. He was befriending no one. Someone tied a numbered tag to
my collar and to the duffel bag (each family was given a number, and that became
our official designation until the camps were closed), someone else passed out
ox lunches for the trip, and we climbed aboard.
I had never been outside Los Angeles County, never traveled more than ten
miles from the coast, had never even ridden on a bus. I was full of excitement, the
way any kid would be, and wanted to look out the window. But for the first few
hours the shades were drawn. Around me other people played cards, read
magazines, dozed, waiting. I settled back, waiting too, and finally fell asleep. The
us felt very secure to me. Almost half its passengers were immediate relatives.
Mama and my older
others had succeeded in keeping most of us together, on
the same bus, headed for the same camp. I didn’t realize until much later what a
job that was. The strategy had been, first, to have everyone living in the same
district when the evacuation began, and then to get all of us included under the
same family number, even though names had been changed by ma
iage. Many
families weren’t as lucky as ours and suffered months of anguish while trying to
a
ange transfers from one camp to another.
We rode all day. By the time we reached our destination, the shades