In Jeanne Wakatzuki's "Farewell to Manzanar", she illustrates the bad experience she along with her family had to go through during WWII, when they were deprived from their freedom. She tried to be somebody else totally different to fit into a society, rejecting who she really was. The struggles she went through during her stay at Manzanar, the crude reality and harshness she faced, made her a stronger person, but at the same time it made her neglect her culture and try to adopt foreign customs. The fact that she was exposed to more American traditions and activities, made her want to be more Americanized.
Karl Yoneda July 3, 1942
Camp life at Manzanar: Female internees practicing...
A monument at Manzanar, "to console the souls of t...Jeanne being of Japanese decent in the American society, felt ashamed and guilty about being who she was. When she and her family were put into the internment camp after the war had started, she had little knowledge of why she was sent to Manzanar. As time went by, she found out why and felt that in a way she deserved that punishment for being Japanese. When Jeanne and her family got out of Manzanar, she felt like everything that was happening to her and her family was meant to be or at least justifiable. "It gradually filled me with shame for being a person guilty of something enormous enough to deserve that kind of treatment"(Houston185). When going back to what used to be her normal life, in a way she excused the treatment received from American people after leaving Manzanar. "We [Kiyo and her] were sitting on a bus-stop bench in Long Beach, when an old, embittered woman stopped and said, 'Why don't you all dirty Japs go back to Japan!' We said nothing at the time"(186). All the rejection and humiliation she faced, just made her more of...