from Farewell to Manzanar

In this excerpt from Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston describes being relocated to a Japanese American internment camp as a young girl during World War II. In response to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. government issued Executive Order 9066, which gave it the authority to place people of Japanese ancestry in prison-like camps. Imagine that you are a recent European immigrant to the United States in 1941 and have just read a newspaper article about Executive Order 9066. How would you feel about the order? Would you sympathize with the Japanese Americans? Write a letter home to your relatives in Europe explaining the reason for the order and your feelings about it.