Life in California
By the time the major events of this memoir have happened, California is like a mythic remembrance of paradise. What isn't to love about Santa Monica? Life in California is lovely, and each day, the family men go out to sea to catch fish. It is balanced and idyllic. That doesn't mean life is perfect. As soon as the US went to war with Japan in WWII, the family has been living in a complicated community. This imagery all comes crashing down when an attack happens just on the other side of the sea, at Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i.
Life in Manzanar
The government decides that since the Japanese are attacking America, all Japanese people must be treated as if they are spies. Forsaking the very law that underpins American life and policy, the government moved the Japanese into internment camps where they were mistreated and treated with contempt and forced to join the US military under duress. This season of Jeanne's life is defined by the cramped industrial spaces, the comfortless arrangements, the lack of sanitation or hygiene, the constant threat of others, the harassment of the military, and the frustration of unfair capture.
Leaving Manzanar
When she leaves Manzanar in the titular moment of the novel, Jeanne understands that they are walking into a world that tolerated and even encouraged the mistreatment of Japanese-Americans. They are going from the hell of Manzanar into the hell of a racist America who is not ready to forgive these Japanese folks for Japans attacks—which they of course had nothing to do with. The imagery of freedom is shadowed by the horror that America allowed this to happen, and no one really ever does anything about it.
Paranoia and fear of people
The abstract imagery of the book is undeniably paranoid. The government shapes their policy on the fear of Japanese insurgents. The Japanese are forced into internment camps where they are abused and monitored by the US military. This leaves the Japanese community riddled by paranoia. When the father is reunited to the rest of his family, his social paranoia leaves him unable to speak with others or confide what happened to him. They return into a world that still resents them and mistreats them with nothing to go on except fear.
