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adayney22's review against another edition
4.0
Book needs some improvement but it provides an important lesson all Americans need to be aware of.
neptune831's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.0
adrianagarcia's review against another edition
4.0
An incredibly educational and impactful read. Great for classroom settings to pair with history on WWII and the treatment of Japanese-Americans and Asian-Americans in the time leading up to, during, and after the war.
sparrowwing12's review against another edition
5.0
This book was amazing. I read it for one of my classes, and I'm so glad I picked it! I'm glad that I was given this chance to read about what happened to those affected by the internment camps, and I will never forget Jeanne's life story.
graciekayyy's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this book given that I’m usually just a fiction reader. I had to read this for school but I think it was actually really good. In my own eyes it is about a young girl who is Japanese(and an American citizen)and her story in the interment camps, specifically Manzanar. Jeanne was only about 5 when she first was brought to the camp with the rest of her family so many of her early years were spent in the camp.it was also very interesting seeing her life after the camps and the need to fit into what America deemed as society while also coming to terms with how America looked at her right after the war(even though she was a citizen). This story was so moving as it shows what stigma America has put in these events throughout history that affect our own citizens. This book really helped me understand and learn more about these camps than I have ever known before and I am grateful for that.
mawalker1962's review against another edition
5.0
A wrenching description of Japanese internment from a child's eye view. A brilliant and moving account that never fails to engage my students. And me.
annevoi's review against another edition
3.0
On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the deportation of 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans from the western states and their incarceration in one of ten "relocation centers" nationwide. Manzanar, on the east side of the Sierra Nevada in the Owens Valley, was the first to open, that March, and the last few hundred internees left in November 1945. At its peak in September 1942 it housed 10,046 in 504 barracks, each divided into four rooms, on a dusty square mile overlooked by Mt. Whitney.
This book, first published in 1973, was written as a family project, but when it was published it provided an eye-opening take on the injustice of those few years, which most Americans knew little if anything about. Written in three parts, it tells the story of Jeanne, who lived at Manzanar between the ages of seven and eleven. She begins by describing the removal and relocation to the camp, which was still in the process of being built; the second part tells about more settled life; and the third tells of Jeanne's difficult readjustment to "normal life" after the war's end.
I especially enjoyed the telling details of camp existence, such as:
"I heard laughter. It was almost dusk, the wind had dropped, and I saw old men squatting int he dirt, Papa and some of his cronies, muttering and smoking their cigarettes. In the summertime they used to burn orange peels under gallon cans, with holes punched in the sides, to keep the mosquitoes away. Somteimes they would bring out their boards to play goh and hana. The orange peels would smolder in there, and the men would hunker down around the cans and watch the smoke seep out the holes."
Or: "Gardens had sprung up everywhere, in the firebreaks, between the rows of barracks—rock gardens, vegetable gardens, cactus and flower gardens. People who lived in Owens Valley during the war still remember the flowers and lush greenery they could see from the highway as they drove past the main gate. The soil around Manzanar is alluvial and very rich. With water siphoned off from the Los Angeles–bound aqueduct, a large farm was under cultivation just outside the camp, providing the mess halls with lettuce, corn, tomatoes, eggplant, string beans, horseradish, and cucumbers. Near Block 28 [where Jeanne's family lived] some of the men who had been professional gardeners built a small park, with mossy nooks, ponds, waterfalls and curved wooden bridges. Sometimes in the evenings we could walk down the raked gravel paths. You could face away from the barracks, look past a tiny rapids toward the darkening mountains, and for a while not be a prisoner at all. You could hang suspended in some odd, almost lovely land you could not escape form yet almost didn't want to leave."
Mostly, the book contains pleasant memories, which befits a young girl. She does describe tensions between her parents; between her proper father (a Japanese citizen) and an older brother over the matter of serving in the U.S. army; between her father, whom some considered an inu, or dog (a collaborator), and other residents. In a brief chapter, she discusses a riot that occurred at the end of 1942: though too young to witness any of it, she writes, "I remember the deadly quiet in the camp the morning before it began, that heavy atmospheric threat of something about to burst. And I remember hearing the crowds rush past our block that night. Toward the end of it they were a lynch mob, swarming from one side of the camp to the other, from the hospital to the police station to the barracks of the men they were after, shouting slogans in English and Japanese."
It's an interesting, well-written book, necessarily a bit thin because written thirty years later and dependent on childhood memories. It underscores for me how difficult it is to recreate the complex, charged life of such a place.
This book, first published in 1973, was written as a family project, but when it was published it provided an eye-opening take on the injustice of those few years, which most Americans knew little if anything about. Written in three parts, it tells the story of Jeanne, who lived at Manzanar between the ages of seven and eleven. She begins by describing the removal and relocation to the camp, which was still in the process of being built; the second part tells about more settled life; and the third tells of Jeanne's difficult readjustment to "normal life" after the war's end.
I especially enjoyed the telling details of camp existence, such as:
"I heard laughter. It was almost dusk, the wind had dropped, and I saw old men squatting int he dirt, Papa and some of his cronies, muttering and smoking their cigarettes. In the summertime they used to burn orange peels under gallon cans, with holes punched in the sides, to keep the mosquitoes away. Somteimes they would bring out their boards to play goh and hana. The orange peels would smolder in there, and the men would hunker down around the cans and watch the smoke seep out the holes."
Or: "Gardens had sprung up everywhere, in the firebreaks, between the rows of barracks—rock gardens, vegetable gardens, cactus and flower gardens. People who lived in Owens Valley during the war still remember the flowers and lush greenery they could see from the highway as they drove past the main gate. The soil around Manzanar is alluvial and very rich. With water siphoned off from the Los Angeles–bound aqueduct, a large farm was under cultivation just outside the camp, providing the mess halls with lettuce, corn, tomatoes, eggplant, string beans, horseradish, and cucumbers. Near Block 28 [where Jeanne's family lived] some of the men who had been professional gardeners built a small park, with mossy nooks, ponds, waterfalls and curved wooden bridges. Sometimes in the evenings we could walk down the raked gravel paths. You could face away from the barracks, look past a tiny rapids toward the darkening mountains, and for a while not be a prisoner at all. You could hang suspended in some odd, almost lovely land you could not escape form yet almost didn't want to leave."
Mostly, the book contains pleasant memories, which befits a young girl. She does describe tensions between her parents; between her proper father (a Japanese citizen) and an older brother over the matter of serving in the U.S. army; between her father, whom some considered an inu, or dog (a collaborator), and other residents. In a brief chapter, she discusses a riot that occurred at the end of 1942: though too young to witness any of it, she writes, "I remember the deadly quiet in the camp the morning before it began, that heavy atmospheric threat of something about to burst. And I remember hearing the crowds rush past our block that night. Toward the end of it they were a lynch mob, swarming from one side of the camp to the other, from the hospital to the police station to the barracks of the men they were after, shouting slogans in English and Japanese."
It's an interesting, well-written book, necessarily a bit thin because written thirty years later and dependent on childhood memories. It underscores for me how difficult it is to recreate the complex, charged life of such a place.