About The Author
JEANNE WAKATSUKI HOUSTON (1934--)
Jeanne (Toyo) Wakatsuki was born on September 26, 1934 in Inglewood, California. Her father, Ko, was born in Hiroshima, Japan and was a first-generation Japanese immigrant to America. Her mother, Riku, was born in Hawaii and was a second generation Japanese-American. Jeanne was the youngest of the children. She had five older sisters and four older brothers. The Wakatsuki family was part of the 110,000 Japanese Americans who were interned in relocation camps during World War II. Farewell to Manzanar, written in 1973 by Jeanne and her husband, James Houston, is the story of her family’s time at the camp.
After being released from the camp in 1945, Jeanne moved back to the Los Angeles area with her parents and some of her siblings. She studied sociology and journalism at San Jose State College in San Jose, California. She met James Houston while in college and married him in 1957.
In 1971 one of her nephews asked Jeanne for details about Manzanar, as he had been born there but did not have many memories of the experience. In 1972, thirty years after leaving Manzanar, Jeanne returned to the Manzanar campsite with her husband and three daughters. This visit helped her come to terms with what had happened to her and her family. Jeanne and her husband began writing Farewellto Manzanar together. She documents the return visit in the last chapter of the book.
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston continues to write and lecture on her works and her life experiences. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her family. Her other books are The Legend of Fire Horse Woman, Beyond Manzanar, and Don’t Cry, It’s Only Thunder.
Along with her husband, she wrote the screenplay for the film version of Farewell to Manzanar. This was a made-for-TV movie that was shown in 1976. The couple’s twin daughters appeared in the movie. The screenplay won the Christopher Award and the Humanities Prize. In 1984 she received the National Women’s Political Caucus award and the Wonder woman award.
HOUSTON, James D. (1933 --)
James Houston was born in San Francisco, California, in 1933. He met Jeanne Wakatsuki while attending San Jose State College, and married her in 1957. He has taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz and at Stanford University. Houston’s other books include A Native Son of the Golden West, Continental Drift, and In the Ring of Fire. He has been awarded the Wallace Stenger Writing Fellowship at Stanford University and has won the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for Fiction as well as other awards.
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