Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp – with ten thousand other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons, and a dance band called The Jive Bombers, who would play any popular song except the nation’s No. 1 hit: Don’t Fence Me In.

Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese American family’s attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention … and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States.