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Author Biography:

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston was born in Inglewood, California on September 26, 1934. She grew up in Southern California until 1942 when she and her family were evacuated after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. They were stripped from their home and taken to Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp. Jeanne, the youngest of the Wakatsuki children, was seven at the time. Even though she was born in the U.S. and she spoke only English, Jeanne was taken to Manzanar and treated as if she was a foreigner or an enemy of the United States. The family spent the next three years in the camp, attempting to live a "normal" life behind barbed wire and under the watch of armed guards in searchlight towers. She was involved with many activities in the camp such as the Girls' Glee Club, talent shows, baton twirling, and school. Several years after leaving the camp in 1945, Jeanne went to San Jose St. College where she studied sociology and journalism. She met her husband, James, there and they married in 1957. She also attended Sorbonne University in Paris. Besides writing, Jeanne has worked as a group worker and a probation officer in San Mateo, California. Jeanne later decided to tell her story about the time she spent in Manzanar in Farewell to Manzanar, co-authored with her husband, James D. Houston.

James D. Houston was born in San Francisco, California in 1933. He has published several novels, a collection of short stories, and a few non-fiction works. His books have earned a Wallace Stegner Writing Fellowship at Stanford, the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, and the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for Fiction in San Francisco. He attended San Jose St. College where he met Jeanne Wakatsuki, and Stanford University where he earned his M.A. James has taught at several universities including the University of California at Santa Cruz and Stanford. He and Jeanne have three children. More....

http://www.ncteamericancollection.org/litmap/houstons_jeane_ca.htm (Mobil Masterpiece Theatre's American Colletion)

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