Jeanne Timeline and Summary

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• War breaks out when Pearl Harbor happens, which means Papa gets taken away by the feds for being Japanese.
• The family moves to Terminal Island, where Jeanne gets freaked out by all the Japanese faces and kids around her (this girl is suffering from some serious culture shock).
• Then the family moves to Boyle Heights, which is kind of… meh. Life is all about waiting for what's going to happen next and dealing with a crappy teacher.
• The family moves to Manzanar and camp life begins… which means super-crowded housing, no privacy, truly icky bathrooms and, weirdly, freedom for Jeanne.
• Jeanne's days are all about hanging out with other kids, and not at all about being with adults.
• Then… Papa comes to camp. Great news, right?
• Nope—he's abusive, alcoholic, and surly. Plus, he never leaves their barracks.
• Jeanne hears people talking about her dad, saying he's an inu (a collaborator with the feds), which gets Papa really angry.
• Then the December Riot happens—it's scary stuff, and two internees even die. Jeanne's not even allowed out of their barracks.
• The second year at camp is a little better: Jeanne goes to school, and camp is finally more organized.
• Jeanne's also trying to find herself—and that means dealing with mean girls, hanging out with Catholic nuns, and even signing up to be baptized.
• She doesn't get baptized though because Papa's all like no way and scares off her nun-mentor, which Jeanne's seriously angry about.
• She does, however, get to go on overnight camping trips outside of the fence, which gives her the first taste of being outside. She likes it, but she wants to return to camp still.
• The feds are slowly shutting the camp down, which means Jeanne's siblings are starting to leave and start new lives outside of camp.
• Then the A-bomb drops on Hiroshima, which means everyone really needs to leave because the feds are closing the camps.
• Jeanne and her parents aren't leaving though—at least not yet. Instead, they just wait around until the feds tell them they have to go.
• Which is in October.
• Papa gets a final burst of defiance and decides to leave before their scheduled date, and he even buys a car and drives them back to Los Angeles.
• Jeanne remembers how fearful she felt returning to Los Angeles because of all the reports of anti-Japanese attacks, but things are okay.
• The family moves into a public housing project in Long Beach.
• Jeanne goes to public school and feels awkward until she finds a best friend in white girl/neighbor Radine.
• They both become baton-twirlers; Jeanne even gets to be a majorette.
• Then they go to high school, where Radine becomes popular but Jeanne doesn't.
• Jeanne's about to drop out of high school by senior year, but Papa moves them all up to San Jose, where Jeanne becomes a cool chick because she's from Los Angeles.
• Jeanne even gets crowned as carnival queen, though this doesn't change how lonely, awkward, and foreign she feels.
• Flash-forward: Jeanne's now an adult, married to a white guy and with three kids.
• She's learned to deal with her memories of Manzanar and takes her family to visit the camp ruins.
• She finds remnants of the rock gardens that the internees (including her father) created; she also hears voices of the dead in the wind. (She doesn't see any dead people though. Phew.)
• This visit makes her feel a lot better about her past.
• She ends with a final memory of that day her father drove her out of camp and back to Los Angeles: he's wild, but also fearless, and this makes her feel fearless too.