Why does Jeanne call Manzanar the “secret that lived in all of our lives”? In what sense was it secret within her family? Within the nation? How did that secret shape her life and the lives of her brothers and sisters?

People who had committed no other crime than being of Japanese descent were imprisoned without due process of law into internment camps during World War II. That is the story being told in this memoir. It is not merely a theme, but the very subject and as the subject it continually raises disturbing questions how far a democracy can go to protect its national security before it is no longer even deserving of being called a democratic state. Manzanar became a symbol of struggle to achieve the American Dream.

The narrator’s father lived outside his homeland of Japan and inside the borders of the U.S. for nearly four decades at the time Pearl Harbor was attacked. He had already suffered discrimination due to the Alien Land Law and despite being treated like a second-class immigrant tourist to the country, he still continued to believe in and pursue the American Dream of making a living to provide for his family and reap the benefits of freedom and a society where the potential for success was not pre-determined as a result of birth into a specific class. Although not directly confronting this as an issue, the inherent unfairness and rigged game that brings immigrants to America in the first place simmers very quietly beneath the surface. The events of the memoir become a connect-the-dots game that winds up creating an image of a country that promises equal opportunity to live the dream, but fails miserably to keep those promises.