Before the camps, Jeanne and her family enjoyed dinner together each night. They laughed and joked with one another, sharing stories of their day. During the camps, though, their dinners were much more somber. The family still ate together, but they spoke little and ate even less. They were all too thin conditions left them weak and frightened. Even after the camps ended and they were back home, Jeanne and her family found that their dinners were never quite the same. The laughter was gone, replaced by a heavy silence that hung over them like a thick fog. “She was a plump woman who laughed easily and cried easily, but I had never seen her cry like this” (Houston & Houston, 2002, p. 13). The happy memories of before the war seemed like distant dreams now; the camps had changed Jeanne and her family forever.
Ansel Adams was a landscape photographer who emphasized the use of light and shadow to create moods and atmospheres in his photographs. He similarly believed very strongly in preserving the natural environment and worked to promote conservationism. Dorothea Lange was a documentary photographer who focused on capturing the human experience during difficult times, such as the Great Depression. She often used her photographs to advocate for social change. Toyo Miyatake was a Japanese-American photographer who was incarcerated in an American internment camp during World War II. He used photography as a way to document life in the camp and preserve the memories of his friends and family. All three photographers were successful in what they were trying to achieve, and their work has been highly praised and recognized by critics and the general public alike.
“Farewell to Manzanar” is a powerful film that tells the true story of Japanese American internment during World War II. The film does an excellent job of depicting everyday life in the camp, as well as how people can still maintain their dignity and hope for the future regardless of the challenges. Before the class, I knew that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, many were forced from their homes and placed in detention camps simply because they were of Japanese descent. I think that the U.S. government took a long time to offer a formal apology and reparations to the internet because, for many years, the government denied that anything bad had happened.