The Wakatsuki's stop eating together in the camp mess hall, and the family begins to disintegrate. There is not enough warm clothing to go around many fall ill from immunizations and poorly preserved food, and they face the indignity of non-partitioned camp toilets (which particularly upsets Jeanne's mother). A month later the government orders the Wakatsuki's to move to the Manzanar Relocation Center, in the desert 225 miles northeast of Los Angeles.Īt the camp, the Japanese Americans find cramped living conditions, badly prepared food, unfinished barracks, and dust blowing in through every crack and knothole. Americans of Japanese descent await their final destination “their common sentiment is shikata ga nai” ("it cannot be helped”). On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 giving the military authority to relocate those posing a potential threat to national security. Jeanne's mother moves the family to the Japanese ghetto on Terminal Island, and then to Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. Jeanne's father burns his Japanese flag and identity papers but is arrested by the FBI and beaten when taken to jail. By the time the boats return, news reaches the family that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On the morning of December 7, 1941, Jeanne Wakatsuki says farewell to her father's sardine fleet at San Pedro Harbor. He becomes the man of the family, leading them early in their internment. After the visit, Woody feels a new pride in his ancestry. After joining (and fighting in the Pacific theater) he visits his father's Aunt Toyo, who gave his father money for the trip to Hawaii. Woody (Jeanne's brother) wants to preserve his family's honor by joining the U.S. Stubborn and proud, he did not cope well with his isolation: he drank and abused his family. Ko Wakatsuki (Jeanne's father) emigrated from Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii and then to Idaho, running away with his wife and abandoning his family. The book describes the Wakatsuki's' experiences during their imprisonment and events concerning the family before and after the war. Soon after, she and the rest of her family were imprisoned at Manzanar (an American internment camp), where 11,070 Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents-who were prevented from becoming American citizens by law-were confined during the Japanese American internment during World War II. They have to move to Terminal Island, where her father, a fisherman who owned two boats, was arrested by the FBI following the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. At age seven, Wakatsuki-a native-born American citizen-and her family were living on Ocean Park (near San Pedro, California). Jeanne Wakatsuki (the book's narrator) is a Nisei (child of a Japanese immigrant).
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