Farewell to Manzanar

Manzanar is a National Historic State Park. Visit the park's website and learn more about the history of Japanese-American Relocation Center: Confinement and Ethnicity. (This is an on-line book with 15 chapters with outstanding photographs.)

Executive Order 9066

Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, EO 9066 authorized the U.S. military to exclude Japanese American citizens and resident aliens from the West Coast. Nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were relocated to ten War Relocation Centers during World War II. At its peak, Manzanar War Relocation Center was the largest "city" in the Eastern Sierra. It had a population of over 10,000, approximately two-thirds of whom where U.S. citizens. The camp opened in April 1942 and closed in November 1945.

Cemetery Monument

Manzanar - America's Concentration Camp is a short description of the relocation center.

Manzanar Relocation Camp is another brief description of the camp with maps and information in an outline format.

Farewell to Manzanar - A Teacher's Guide to the novel by Houston & Houston

This guide is from SCORE (State of California Online Resources for Education). It identifies content standards for language arts.

" Using Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, students use the Internet explore the themes of racism, and the civil and legal rights of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Specifically, students compare the account of life at the Manzanar internment camp in the text with accounts on the web and then demonstrate their understanding of the issues of racism, civil rights and legal rights.

The following questions will help guide the students and teachers throughout the unit:

Who made the decisions about the Japanese-Americans?
Where were the relocation camps located and what were the conditions?
Is there a significance to the geographical location of these camps?
How were the families selected to go to the location camps and what happened to their property?
How were these people treated in the relocation camps and who was responsible for their welfare?
What can citizens do to right the wrongs committed by the U.S. government?

Student Activity 1: Compare/Contrast Essay

Student Activity 2: Read Informational Text to Write a Camp Description (Exposition)

Student Activity 3: Persuasive Letter to President Roosevelt (Business Letter)

Student Activity 4: Dialectical Journal as a Response to Literature

From KQED Resources for "Rabbit in the Moon" a memoir/documentary by Emiko Omori. These websites are also given:

There are dozens of useful sites including one devoted to "Rabbit in the Moon"
Japanese American Network
Japanese American History Archives

Farewell to Manzanar WebQuest includes the following research sections:

Immigration Issues
Pearl Harbor
Evacuation
Internment Photographs
Their Best Way to Show Loyalty

Densho Education Website - This is an extensive website developed with Stanford University's School of Education. It has chapters like: Causes of Incarceration including sections on Racism in the 1940s, Anti-Japanese Groups, Institutionalized Racism, and Myths and Stereotypes; Wartime Hysteria including sections of Wartime Fears, Impact of False Claims, Japan's Early Victories, News Media; Failure of Leadership including sections on Intelligence Reports, President's Advisors, Lack of Opposition, Supreme Court, Leadership in Hawaii; and Economic Motives with sections on Farming Competition, Labor Competition, Hawaii Workers. There is also a Timeline, Glossary, and Notes and Bibliography. [There is a large Archive of personal histories on videotaped interviews as well as photographs and documents which requires a registration and fee for institutional use, and requires Windows.] Additional Readings (for teachers?) tell about Immigrants and Civil Rights, Prelude to Internment, Internment Years, Question of Loyalty, and Legacies: Redress.

How did people feel? Read an anonymous poem from another camp in Arizona about "That Damn Fence"