Book: Farewell to Manzanar

Our 8th grade students have read the book Farewell to Manzanar in the last couple of years. We have dedicated teachers who love to teach from a multicultural perspective and this book has always been one that our students enjoy. The book focuses on a Japanese-American family, told from the viewpoint of seven-year-old Jeanne Wakatsuki. She addresses her experiences before the Pearl Harbor bombing in Hawaii, and how quickly her life changed after December 7th, 1941. Wakatsuki describes how quickly her family begins to cope and adapt to their new lives in the Manzanar internment camps. Her father's anger for being in the internment camps is felt as she describes how fearful she was of him because she could not understand what was going on. This book is an easy read with 208 pages. Additionally, the author has a section (last pages of the book) where she provides a reader's guide and questions for discussions, which is a plus for educators. This year, our students had the opportunity to go on a field trip to Manzanar, California. They had a great time connecting what they had read in the classroom with what they saw inside the internment camps...it became more real to them.