Farewell to Manzanar: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Over the years, the family has moved a lot due to Papa’s different jobs. Jeanne was born on a farm in Inglewood, but she grew up near the water in Ocean Park, in a neighborhood with no other Japanese families. Papa chose to live there so that he couldn’t be “labeled or grouped” by his race. However, after Papa’s arrest Mama moves the family to Terminal Island; Woody and one of Jeanne’s older sisters already live there, and it’s comforting to be among other Japanese families in similar predicaments. However, Terminal Island feels “foreign” to Jeanne, as it’s the first time she’s gone to school with other children of her own race. She’s “terrified all the time.”

When Jeanne was little, Papa often threatened to “sell [her] to the Chinaman” if she behaved badly. This, coupled with the fact that she grew up among white children, gave her a “fear of Asian faces” that lasts until she moves to Terminal Island. Populated almost exclusively by Japanese family, the town is a “ghetto” controlled by the canneries. The men go fishing, and when they return all the women run to the cannery to process the catch, even if it’s the middle of the night. Mama and Chizu start working in the cannery in order to provide for the family in Papa’s absence.

In Terminal Island, the family lives in a glorified shack, “the cheapest kind of migrant workers’ housing.” The people around them are hardworking and proud to be considered “roughnecks”; they speak a slangy dialect of Japanese that Jeanne doesn’t understand, and because of this the other kids in her class despise her. Every day after school she and her brother Kiyo run all the way home, afraid of being attacked.

After two months, the navy decides to push all the Japanese out of Terminal Island, as it seems “dangerous” to allow Asians to live so near the water and the nearby naval base. Mama knows something like this is coming, but she can’t prepare because she doesn’t know where else to get work and she has to support her young children and her mother, Granny, who is blind and speaks no English. When the official order comes, the family has forty-eight hours to move.

Immediately, opportunistic secondhand dealers prowl the neighborhood, offering ridiculously low prices for goods that the families can’t carry with them. Mama has brought only her most valuable things to Terminal Island: pottery, treasured tableware, and kimonos that Granny brought from Japan. When they pack up Woody’s car to leave, Mama’s beautiful china just won’t fit, and she reluctantly decides to sell it. A dealer offers her just fifteen dollars—a humiliating price. Worn out and stressed from packing and calming her family, Mama smashes a dinner plate on the ground. The dealer starts shouting at her, but Mama smashes every piece of china, even after he runs away.

With help from the American Friends Service, the family finds a house in a “minority ghetto” in Los Angeles. The whole family is gripped with uncertainty, as there are rumors going around about forcibly moving the entire Japanese population inland. Jeanne’s brothers constantly speculate on how to keep the family together if such a thing does happen; they don’t want to be separated again, as Papa was. Mama has finally received a letter from him telling her that he’s been imprisoned as an enemy alien in Fort Lincoln, North Dakota.

With Papa, the patriarch, gone, Jeanne’s brothers are anxious to take care of the family but not exactly sure how to do it. However, it seems like there’s not much for them to do but wait for government decisions. In these situations, the Japanese use the phrase “shikata ga nai”—“it cannot be helped,” or “it must be done.”

Mama and Woody go to work packing celery, while Jeanne and her siblings Kiyo and May go to school. Jeanne is confused and hurt that her teacher “would have nothing to do with me”—this is the first time she’s felt “outright hostility” from a white person. She doesn’t understand that anti-Asian feelings, always present on the West Coast, have come to a head since the U.S. went to war with Japan.

A month later, the family is ordered to evacuate Los Angeles to Manzanar, a town they’ve never heard of. In some ways, the family is relieved; they’ve heard stories of overt violence against Japanese-Americans and feel this might be safer to be in government protection, away from the frontlines of naval operations. Proud to be wearing a new coat, Jeanne reports to a pickup point with her family and boards a Greyhound bus headed inland. It’s her first bus ride.

Jeanne is very excited about the trip, and she feels safe on the bus. Half the passengers are related to her, and the adults are all playing cards or reading as they do at home. Mama and her brothers have strategized to make sure everyone in the family is evacuated to the same camp; other families, less lucky, spent months in separation while they waited for transfers.

By late afternoon, the bus reaches Manzanar. Jeanne sees a red, dusty landscape; dust swirls around the bus and pelts the windows. The bus drives through a barbed-wire fence and Jeanne can see some tents, behind which lie long rows of barracks. The adults on the bus are silent and apprehensive at this sight. But Jeanne leans out the window and yells, “Hey! This whole bus is full of Wakatsukis!” Her outburst breaks the tension, and everyone starts laughing.

The Wakatsukis have arrived just in time for dinner, which takes place in a half-completed mess hall. The new arrivals eat overcooked food out of army mess kits. The Caucasian kitchen staff serves rice with fruit for dessert; this is a disgusting combination for the internees, as Japanese never eat rice with sweet foods. However, no one protests; when Jeanne opens her mouth Mama pokes her, warning her not to be impolite.

After dinner, the family is taken to Block 16, which has just been finished the day before. The barracks are just shacks covered with tarpaper. Shoddy construction means that dust and wind come easily inside. The Wakatsukis get two tiny units, furnished with army cots, even though there are twelve members of the family, including Woody’s baby daughter. They try to partition the units with blankets in order to maintain some privacy.

In fact, the Wakatsukis are lucky to be living only with family members. Jeanne’s oldest sister and her husband live in a unit with strangers who constantly argue about domestic arrangements and noise at night. Eventually, Jeanne’s sister leaves Manzanar to harvest beets in Idaho; even though the work is grueling, she and her husband can have a cabin to themselves.

As the youngest child, Jeanne gets to sleep next to Mama. She’s happy about this and continues to sleep next to her mother every night until Papa returns.