Farewell to Manzanar

Farewell To Manzana - Foreword - Chapter 5

Making Meanings

1. Why did Papa burn his flag? What did Jeanne mean when she said Papa had become "a man without a country"?

2. Why did Mama move the family to Terminal Island after Papa was taken away?

3. Irony is a contrast between what we expect to happen and what actually happens. What is ironic about the threat the Jeanne and Kiyo face from students at Terminal Island?

4. When the family is given forty-eight hours to leave Terminal Island, Mama destroyed her porcelain dinner set. Why?

5. Why do think Chapter 5 is called "Almost a family"?

6. What are some of the degrading conditions/features of the camp and how do they affect the morale (mindset) of the prisoners?

7. Near the end of this section, there is a "fast-forward" to a few incidents that occur after the camps have been closed. What might the author be trying to accomplish with this shift in Setting? Explain.

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1) Papa burned the flag because it might cause people to believe he still had a connection to Japan.

That night Papa burned the flag he had brought with him from Hiroshima thirty-five years earlier. It was such a beautiful piece of material, I couldn’t believe he was doing that. He burned a lot of papers too, documents, anything that might suggest he still had some connection with Japan.

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Source(s)

Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki; Houston, James D.. Farewell to Manzanar (p. 6). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.