Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and husband James D. Houston in San Francisco Japantown in 2004.
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of “Farewell to Manzanar,” died of natural causes at her home in Santa Cruz on Dec. 21. She was 90.
Her death was not announced until last week.
Born on Sept. 26, 1934, in Inglewood, Houston was the last of 10 children born to Ko and Riku Wakatsuki. At the time, Ko was a farmer on the outskirts of Los Angeles. When Houston was two years old, Ko turned to commercial fishing and moved the family to Ocean Park, a predominantly Caucasian, small coastal community whose main attraction was an amusement pier. Houston recalled, “The pier was my nursery school, the amusement attendants my sitters. The neighborhood kids and I spent most of our days there.”
She and her family were among the 10,000 Japanese Americans held at Manzanar, located in the Owens Valley about 225 north of Los Angeles and now a National Historic Site operated by the National Park Service. After World War II, she studied sociology and journalism at San Jose State University, where she met her future husband, James D. Houston. She pursued graduate work at San Francisco State University and at the Sorbonne in France.
The widely acclaimed book “Farewell to Manzanar,” written by Houston and her husband, who was a creative writing teacher at UC Santa Cruz, was published in 1973. Based upon her personal experiences during and after her family’s imprisonment, the memoir was one of the first publications to discuss the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans.
According to the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Houston’s nephew visited her one day in 1971. He was taking a sociology course at UC Berkeley and wanted to know more about the concentration camps that had detained approximately 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. The nephew, who had been born in Manzanar, asked to know more about the family’s experiences.
“Whenever my family got together and we happened to talk about camp, we would joke about the lousy food, the dust storms or the communal showers, or we talked lightheartedly about recreational activities. I reiterated the same stories to my nephew in the same superficial way,” Houston recalled in an essay she wrote in 1992 for the Contemporary Authors Autobiographical Series.
The nephew wanted more answers. “Auntie, you’re telling me all these bizarre things. I mean, how did you feel about being locked up like that?” he prodded.
Houston was stunned. “He asked me a question no one had ever asked before, a question I had never dared ask myself. Feel? How did I feel? For the first time I dropped the protective cover of humor and nonchalance. I allowed myself to ‘feel.’ I began to cry. I couldn’t stop crying.”
A 2001 reunion celebrating the 25th anniversary of the broadcast of “Farewell to Manzanar” in San Francisco’s Japantown. From left: cast members James Saito, Dori Takeshita, Nobu McCarthy; author/screenwriter Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston; cinematographer Hiro Narita; author/screenwriter James D. Houston; cast members Clyde Kusatsu, Akemi Kikumura, Frank Abe. Below, the cover of Houston’s memoir.
Houston realized that the camp experiences were too difficult and too painful for her to talk about. “Perhaps I could write a memoir, a history – just for the family,” she considered. That history became “Farewell to Manzanar,” a haunting recollection of the Wakatsuki family’s memories of three-and-a-half years of unjustified imprisonment.
Houston also co-wrote the screen-play for the 1976 NBC television adaptation, for which she received the Humanitas Prize and an Emmy nomination. Directed by John Korty, the movie featured a mostly Japanese American cast, including Nobu McCarthy, Yuki Shimoda, Dori Takeshita, Akemi Kikumura, Clyde Kusatsu, Pat Morita, Mako, James Saito, Frank Abe, Seth Sakai and Vernon Kato.
In 2001, Houston, her husband and cast members took part in a celebration of the movie’s 25th anniversary in San Francisco Japantown, hosted by the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California.
The film was distributed to California public schools and libraries in 2003 but was not available on DVD until 2011, through the efforts of the Japanese American National Museum.
The book, which is assigned reading in schools throughout the U.S., has sold over 1 million copies and is now in its 79th printing. The California Reads program produced a curriculum guide for “Farewell to Manzanar” in 2011.
Houston was the author of three other books — “Don’t Cry, It’s Only Thunder” (with Paul G. Hensler), “Beyond Manzanar: Views of Asian American Womanhood” and “The Legend of Fire Horse Woman” — along with numerous essays, articles and reviews often focused on themes of ethnicity and diversity.
In 1984, Houston was one of 14 American women to receive the Wonder Woman Award, an honor given to women over the age of 40 who have made outstanding achievements in the pursuit of truth and positive social change. Her works also earned a U.S.-Japan Cultural Exchange Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation residence at Bellagio, Italy.
Other honors include the Women of Achievement Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus; the Carey McWilliams Award from the California Studies Association; a Certificate of Commendation for Literature and History from the California Legislature; the Japanese American of the Biennium Award for Achievement in Arts, Literature and Communication from the Japanese American Citizens League; and the Award of Excellence from the Japanese American National Museum.
In 2018, to mark the 45th anniversary of “Farewell to Manzanar,” Houston spoke at the Santa Monica Public Library as part of its “Santa Monica Reads” program and received a city proclamation.
In 2019, Houston was among those inducted into the 13th Class of the California Hall of Fame by Gov. Gavin Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
“Today we know the experience of death, divorce, sexual abuse, and parental alcoholism can remain buried in the subconscious until the memories surface years later, usually 30 or 40,” Houston said in her acceptance speech. “I realized the feeling I carried about the incarceration was one of deep humiliation, like a person who had been raped. You are the victim, yet you are sullied by that experience, ashamed to draw attention to it.
“For years, I felt guilty for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Somehow I was responsible for that infamous event. When I asked my mother, ‘Why are we in this prison camp?’ I was then too young to understand war and politics. And she said, ‘It’s because we are Japanese.’ She didn’t say anything about a war with Japan. So in my mind, it was not only bad to be Japanese, it was criminal … Thus, crimes of a government can become sins of the people, especially in the mind of an innocent child.
“Today, there are all too many politicians and irresponsible media who find scapegoats to blame for the country’s problems, and more and more it seems those scapegoats are immigrants. How often do we hear, ‘They are different from us,’ ‘They have no idea of democracy and freedom,’ ‘They don’t and won’t speak our language’?
“Many of us who lived through the racism and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II remember what it was like to have those very words directed against one innocent group. But today, we know better. We have the shoulders of Martin Luther King and others to stand upon. Our consciousness has changed. And because of this, our task is greater.
“For now we are in a partnership, a complex relationship where we must learn about each other. No longer do we live in the simplistic structure of one group authoritatively dominating others.”
James Houston, who wrote nine novels and a number of nonfiction works, died in 2009 at the age of 75. The couple is survived by their children, Corinne, Joshua and Gabrielle.
Following are comments from community organizations and leaders:
Japanese American Citizens League: JACL joins the Wakatsuki family and the entire Japanese American community in mourning the passing of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. Her renowned memoir, “Farewell to Manzanar,” introduced many to the World War II Japanese American incarceration experience for the first time.
Densho:Densho mourns the loss of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, a key figure in sharing the story of the wartime incarceration in the 1970s.
“Farewell to Manzanar,” her camp memoir co-written with her husband, James D. Houston, and first published in 1973, was a pioneering work that was one of the first of the Nisei memoirs and certainly the most widely read, becoming a frequently assigned book for California middle and high school students. It was later adapted into a made-for-television movie in 1976.
Densho Content Director Brian Niiya writes, “I still recall seeing the movie highlighted on the front page of the local TV listings and recognizing it as being significant even if my teenage self couldn’t quite articulate why. Though the book and movie were not universally embraced by the Japanese American community, they were important works for their time, and I actually think they hold up fairly well today, even acknowledging the issues raised by their detractors. Though less well known, her 2003 novel ‘The Legend of Fire Horse Woman,’ a three-generation family saga set in part in a fictionalized Manzanar, is also well worth the read.
“I got to know Jeanne a bit in the 2000s, when she took an interest in efforts to identify and preserve the Honouliuli detention camp site on O`ahu, since she spent significant time on the islands in her later years. She and James were early visitors to the site, and her appearance at an early event in Honolulu helped raise money and attention for Honouliuli efforts.”
Though she is no longer with us, Jeanne’s books and other writings will continue to be important entry points to the Japanese American incarceration story for many.
JAMPilgrimages Remembering Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, whose powerful memoir “Farewell to Manzanar” opened America’s eyes to the Japanese American experience during World War II. Her courage in sharing her family’s story at Manzanar helped educate generations about this dark chapter in U.S. history and inspired countless readers and writers. Her work remains essential reading and her impact on American literature and civil rights awareness will endure.
Heart Mountain Interpretive Center:Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s “Farewell to Manzanar” is an essential part of the Japanese American literary canon. We mourn her passing and send our best wishes to her family and legion of friends.
Mystery author Naomi Hirahara:Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston collaborated with her husband, James Houston, to write the most well-known chronicle of the Japanese American World War II experience, “Farewell to Manzanar.” She spent her young prewar life in Southern California, even living on Terminal Island for a brief time.
I was able to speak with her a few times — once in Heritage Source’s booth during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and then a couple of times while we were in Seattle for the Japanese American National Museum’s 2013 conference. I saw her walking toward the monorail from SeaTac and my husband and I assisted her with her luggage.
She was close to 80 at that time, but still that badass woman of her youth. She told us of her work as a parole officer; I loved experiencing this street-smart woman as opposed to an intellectual devoted only to books. Among my prized collection of autographed books will be hers.
Thank you for your life and work, Jeanne.
Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong, executive director of Japanese American Museum of Oregon, former superintendent of Honouliuli National Historic Site: It is finally public now. My family and the Japanese American community lost a great advocate and storyteller. My aunt Jeanne passed away shortly before Christmas. She was a wonderful human being and a great travel buddy. I will miss her so much. May she rest in peace and be reunited with her true love, Uncle Jim.