NOTES ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A FEW
JEANNE WAKATSUKI HOUSTON

HOUSTON, Jeanne (Toyo) Wakatsuki (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 familys 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 Farewell
to 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 Dont Cry, Its 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 couples twin daughters appeared in the movie. The screenplay won the
Christopher Award and the Humanities Prize. In 1984 she received the National Womens 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. Houstons 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 and other awards.

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