Wakatsuki’s American Identity

Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, all was well in the Wakatsuki household. The family lived in a peaceful Los Angeles suburb, populated primarily by Caucasian families. Jeanne’s father, a fisherman by trade, intentionally kept his family out of more traditional Asian neighborhoods in an effort to integrate his children and adapt them for their lives in a culturally different society. Jeanne wrote of her childhood neighborhood, “We were the only Japanese family in the neighborhood. Papa liked it that way” (10).

Soon after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, things changed for the Wakatsuki family. Jeanne’s father was taken away under suspicion of treachery by the F.B.I. and the family was forced to deal without their p

It is not long after there arrival at the camp that they are rejoined by their father. Jeanne described her father as being beaten down and lifeless. He began to slip into a dark depression and his days became fueled by rage and alcohol. “He didn’t die there, but things finished for him there, whereas for me it was like a birthplace” (47). After his return Jeanne began to break away from her family, and became more autonomous.

Jeanne was troubled and confused as to where she fit into America, that only later in life was she able to understand who she really was. Her entire account of her days before, during, and after Manzanar, only serve to acknowledge how confused she really was, and how destructive shame in ones culture can be. Much of that shame was placed on her in her early years by her father. He taught Jeanne to be afraid of other Japanese people. He isolated his family from other Japanese, and raised them in an all white neighborhood. Later on at Manzanar, Jeanne began to embrace certain western traditions and was admonished by her father for not being Japanese enough. Both her family and society confused Jeanne to no end, and it was only later in life, by returning to Manzanar, that she was able to find some resolution.

To Jeanne, during those years, being American meant to be a beautiful, baton twirling, homecoming queen, with white skin and blonde hair. Jeanne’s distorted view of being an American began to unravel her sense of self. Although she was still fully aware of whom and what she was, “I never wanted to change my face or to be someone other than myself” (171); she was also aware of the fact that she was not the norm, or the standard by which all were judged.

Standing amongst the ruins of Manzanar with her family, Jeanne began her healing process. Healing from the pains she associated with her culture, and how her coming of age in America, in a time where she was classified as the enemy, made her who she had become. It is through the process of writing about these events, that Jeanne was able to arrive at an understanding of where she fit into America. She was a mother, a daughter, a wife and a sis

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