Farewell to Manzanar Book Review

**** 1/2 (Out of 5)
By: Giuliano Verdicchio

I liked this book and would recommend it to other readers, because it accurately describes what people of Japanese decent went through in internment camps (like Manzanar) all around the United States. I would ask other classmates to read this book because it gives a bit of history (About WWII) but also it describes how the author, who was an internee at Manzanar, felt about her experience, both before and after her internment.

This book was in an autobiographical format. The story described the author and her family’s hardships throughout the period around WWII. I like how the author includes words in Japanese and gives their definition in the book. I like this because it adds onto the reality of the story so it seems like your actually sitting with the family as they use Japanese words. I like how the author uses the writing technique of showing how her whole family reacts to their surroundings and how they treat each other.

The main character in this story is Jeanne Wakatuski (She is also the author). This book focuses on her family in the Manzanar Internment Camp. As the story continues, the author is constantly surrounded by other real characters like her brothers, sisters, father, mother, and friends she makes along the way. The U.S. government is like the antagonist because they are the ones who put them in the camp.

The writing style of the author was very interesting because it seemed like she almost divided her life before, during, and after the war into three different parts. The author puts like what seems to be almost all her experiences with discriminatory people into the book, which I think proves her main point about Japanese Internment.

I would recommend this book to anyone 12 and up. I think the age should be 12 and up because I think that’s the age where the reader would actually be able to understand exactly what happened and be able to grasp the scene related in the book. I hope you take my advice and read this great book about Japanese Internment in the 1940’s.