Farewell to Manzanar: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

That morning, Jeanne and her family wait half an hour in freezing wind to get breakfast. They bring it back to the unit and eat huddled around the stove. Woody is hard at work fixing up the shack, but there are almost no materials to work with in the camp. Months pass before conditions in the shack truly improve. In the meantime, the family lives with the bare floors and bare bulbs, as well as the open ceilings that allow young children to climb up the rafters and spy on other people’s homes.

At this point, all the internees realize that they really weren’t prepared for the grim reality of camp life. At least the Wakatsukis brought coats; some men came in short-sleeved shirts and hats and had to wait for coats to arrive. The War Department, in charge of all the camps, sends old military surplus uniforms. Eventually, seamstresses among the internees form factories to turn old camps into usable clothes, but for now everyone makes do. Jeanne laughs when she sees Mama wearing old trousers much too big for her, but the important thing is to stay warm.

At the beginning, Jeanne is constantly plagued with stomach cramps and diarrhea, caused by typhoid vaccinations, spoiled food, and the close quarters. To make things worse, latrines are crowded and often out of order.

The first time Jeanne and Mama visit the latrine on Block 16, they find it covered in excrement and all the toilets overflowing. A woman directs them to Block 12, where they join a long line. The toilets here work, but there are no partitions. As do most Japanese people, Mama prizes modesty and it’s “agony” for her to use the bathroom among strangers. One old woman has solved this issue by surrounding herself with a cardboard screen. When she struggles to fold it, Mama assists her; they politely bow to each other, and the other woman offers to lend her the screen.

Eventually, the internees build partitions in the latrines, one by one. Mama and Jeanne’s sisters walk all the way across camp to use bathrooms with private toilets. Many women wait until the middle of the night to use the toilets, with the ironic result that midnight is “the most crowded time at all.”

Mama never becomes accustomed to the “humiliation” of the latrines, but she learns to endure it, telling herself “shikata ga nai.” Even though she cares so much about personal privacy, she knows she has to concentrate on the problems of her family in order to survive. The desire for privacy and the willingness to subordinate oneself to the community are two typical Japanese traits, which the issei, or first-generation immigrants, have inherited from their parents and transmit to their children. It’s these traits that all the internees to “take a desolate stretch of wasteland and gradually make it livable.” However, the conditions to which they arrived are such “an open insult to that other, private self” that most people find it hard to overcome.