Summery:
Chapter 3
The Wakatsukis wake up its the first
morning in Manzanar and they are covered in gray dust that has blown through
the knotholes in the walls and floor. Jeanne and Kiyo thinks it’s funny because
it looks like Kiyo has gray hair. They used their clothes as bedding for extra
warmth. Woody calls through the wall, jokingly asking if they have fallen into
the same flour barrel as him. Kiyo replies that they have not, joking that
theirs is “full of Japs.” The kids get dressed quickly, and Woody tells
Jeanne’s brothers Ray and Kiyo to cover the knotholes with tin can lids while
Jeanne and her sister May sweep the floor and fold laundry. Woody threatens to
make the boys eat any sand that comes up through the knotholes. When Kiyo asks
about the sand that comes in through the cracks
Woody jokes that it is a different kind of sand and, mimicking Papa’s voice,
says he knows the difference. Mama
asks Woody to cover the cracks. He promises to patch the cracks with scrap lumber,
but she is not happy because of the bad conditions. Woody promises to make the
repair job better and goes out to see what is for breakfast. Kiyo jokes that it
will be hotcakes with soy sauce, but Woody says it will be rice with maple
syrup and butter.
Chapter
4
The Wakatsukis wait in the cold for half an hour for
breakfast and eat huddled around the stove that Woody had repaired. He starts fixing things, but it is
months before the family notches any improvements. She says that the Japanese, not knowing what to expect, did not
bring enough warm clothing for the April weather and high altitude. The War
Department begins issuing World War I surplus clothing, most of which is too
large for the Japanese. A makeshift clothing factory is soon set up, and dozens
of seamstresses convert the surplus into more practical articles of clothing
like capes.
Almost nothing works
in the camps, and the children are continually sick due to typhoid shots and
food is spoiling because the of the inexperienced cooks and the refrigeration
system keeps going out so the food is going bad. People start having to go to
the bathroom because of those things and it became part of daily life for the
Japanese. On the first morning,
Jeanne and Mama try to use the bathroom in their block but finds out that the
toilets are overflowing onto the already excrement covered floor. They try another restroom two blocks
away. It is like every other one in
each of the ten camps, which were all built according to the same plan. The toilets are back to back, with no
partitions. One old woman sets up a cardboard box around her toilet as a
makeshift partition. She offers the partition to Mama, who kindly accepts it.
Cardboard partitions become widely used until wooden partitions arrived, but
many people choose to wait to use the bathroom until late at night usually
around midnight so there is more privacy. Like many Japanese, Mama never gets
to use the toilets because she likes to have a lot of privacy, but she endures
them because she knows that cooperation is the only way to survive.
Chapter 5
Jeanne notices that after a few weeks, her
family stops eating together in mess halls. She remembers that before the camp,
her family used to enjoy eating meals around a large, round wooden table. But
now, Granny is too weak to go to the
mess hall, and Jeanne’s older siblings often eat with friends in other mess
halls where the food is better, while the younger brothers make a game of
trying to eat in as many different mess halls as possible in a single meal
period. Jeanne and Kiyo often eat with other children, away from the adults. Wakatsuki tells us that later in the
war, sociologists noticed the division occurring within families, and the camp authorities
tried to force families to eat together but it didn’t work. But camp life destroyied the Wakatuski family—the barracks were
too small for Mama to cook in, and there was no privacy. Wakatsuki says that
the closing of the camps made this destruction worse, since the older children
moved away and the remaining family members had to eat in shifts in a tiny
apartment. She adds that after being
released, she wrote a paper for her journalism class about how her family used
to catch and eat fish together at their home in Ocean Park. She ended the paper
by saying that she wanted to remember this experience because she knew she
would never be able to have it again.
Back in the camp, a
call goes out for volunteer workers, and many Japanese sign up. Jeanne’s
brothers sign up as carpenters, roofers, and reservoir crewmembers, and Mama
begins to earn nineteen dollars a month as a dietician helping the camp cooks. She works in order to pay the
warehouse in Los Angeles, where she has stored the family furniture. She
worries about Papa, from which she receives letters occasionaly, but starts to
ignore Jeanne. Jeanne looks for attention elsewhere and begins to observe the
other people in camp. In hot weather she watches the 10,000
people walking around the camp at night. She pays special attention to a
half-black woman who is masquerading as Japanese to stay with her husband; an
aristocratic woman who whitens her face with rice flour; a pair of pale,
thin-lipped nurses who look like traditional Japanese kabuki theater actors;
and Japanese nuns. The nuns run an
orphanage in the camp with Father Steinbeck, who is white, and they nearly
convert Jeanne to Catholicism before Papa interferes. Jeanne is attracted to the stories of saints and martyrs, and
spends nearly every afternoon and all day Sunday with the sisters. Walking home
in the hot sun, she likes to imagine that she too is suffering with the
martyrs. One day, however, she suffers sunstroke and does not go back to her
religious study for a month.
Just before Jeanne’s
sunstroke, Papa returns to Manzanar, and the whole family goes out to greet
him. Woody’s wife, Chizu, isn’t there because she has just given birth to a
son, whom she has named George in honor of Papa’s return. When the bus door
opens, the first thing Jeanne sees is a cane. Papa is thin, and withered, and
he favors his right leg. He and the family look at each other in silence, and
only Jeanne has the courage to approach him. She runs to him, hugs his legs, and
begins to cry.
Words I didn’t know
· Immunizations:(noun)
The fact
or process
of becoming
immune, as against a
disease.
· Partitions: (noun) A separation, as of two or more things.
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