Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston - Revisiting Manzanar

In 1981 The Kitchen Sisters interviewed Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston for a story about life on the homefront during World War II. Jeanne told stories of her childhood growing up in Manzanar, a hastily built detention camp surrounded by barbed wire and armed guard towers in the midst of the Owens Valley in the Mojave desert, where Japanese Americans were incarcerated for 3 years during World War II.  Jeanne was 7 years old when her father, a commercial fisherman, was taken away with no explanation by the FBI and imprisoned in Bismarck, North Dakota. The family had no idea where he had been taken or why. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's book, Farewell to Manzanar, written in collaboration with her husband James D. Houston, has become a curriculum staple in classrooms across the nation and is one of the first ways many are introduced to this dark period of American history.  In listening to this interview recorded 44 years ago we are struck by how Jeanne's memories of those years — the sense of fear, of families being separated, of innocent people being terrorized, hunted — resonate with what is happening in our country today.  Jeanne died last year at the age of 90.

Om Podcasten

The Kitchen Sisters Present… Stories from the b-side of history. Lost recordings, hidden worlds, people possessed by a sound, a vision, a mission. Deeply layered stories, lush with interviews, field recordings and music. From powerhouse NPR producers The Kitchen Sisters (The Keepers, Hidden Kitchens, The Hidden World of Girls, The Sonic Memorial Project, Lost & Found Sound, and Fugitive Waves). "The Kitchen Sisters have done some of best radio stories ever broadcast" —Ira Glass. The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced in by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell and mixed by Jim McKee. A proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.