Teaching Farewell to Manzanar

Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when the United States government authorized the forced relocation of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast to incarceration camps. Teaching “Farewell to Manzanar” interweaves a literary analysis of Jeanne’s memoir with an exploration of the relevant historical context surrounding her experience.

This guide provides engaging activities, teaching strategies, and recommended media to structure your students' reading of the memoir. Throughout their study, students will return to the central questions:  How do our confrontations with justice and injustice help to shape our identity? How do those confrontations influence the things we say and do?

This guide is part of Witnesses to History, a series that helps students access the past through the voices of real people recalling experiences from their youth.