James d. houston

Jeanne wakatsuki houston death
Joshua houston
Jeanne Toyo Wakatsuki Houston was an American writer.

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Remembering Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

January 10, 2025

Densho mourns the loss of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, a key figure in sharing the story of the wartime incarceration in the 1970s.

Farewell to Manzanar, her camp memoir co-written with her husband, James Houston, and first published in 1973, was a pioneering work that was one of the first of the Nisei memoirs and certainly the most widely read, becoming a frequently assigned book for California middle and high school students. It was later adapted into a made-for-television movie in 1976.

Densho Content Director Brian Niiya writes, “I still recall seeing the movie highlighted on the front page of the local TV listings and recognizing it as being significant even if my teenage self couldn’t quite articulate why. Though the book and movie were not universally embraced by the Japanese American community, they were important works for their time, and I actually think they hold up fairly well today, even acknowledging the issues raised by their detractors. Though less well known, her 2003 novel The Legend of

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Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki 1934- (Jeanne Toyo Wakatsuki Houston)

PERSONAL:

Born September 26, 1934, in Inglewood, CA; daughter of George Ko (a fisher and farmer) and Riku (a homemaker) Wakatsuki; married James D. Houston (a novelist), 1957; children: Corinne Houston Traugott, Joshua D., Gabrielle Houston Neville. Ethnicity: "Japanese." Education:San Jose State College (now State University), B.A., 1956; also attended San Francisco State University and Sorbonne, University of Paris. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Buddhist/Christian. Hobbies and other interests: Swimming, dancing, film.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Santa Cruz, CA. Agent—Linda Allen Literary Agency, 1949 Green St., Ste. 5, San Francisco, CA 94123. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Group worker and juvenile probation officer in San Mateo, CA, 1955-57; writer. Guest speaker at educational institutions and other venues, including Sonoma State College, University of Hawaii at Hilo, University of Texas at Austin, University of Ryukyus, Whittier College, and Windward College; writer in residence at Bellagio, i

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Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston (1934–) Biography

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston contributed the following autobiographical essay to SATA:

Colors! Seeing the stages of my life as colors. Where did I get such an idea? I trace it back to 1956, when I was twenty-one years old working as a group counselor in a Northern California juvenile detention hall. It was my first full-time job. I was supervising teenage girls brought in for violating probation, running away from home, and sometimes more serious crimes But most often the offense was "incorrigibility.

Jessica T. (fictitious name) was a racial mix of Philippine, Samoan, and French. One of the "incorrigibles," she was brought to the hall for breaking probation or, more precisely, for getting into a fight. Jessica was well-known to the staff at Hillcrest. She was sixteen and, since the age of twelve when she was booked for running away from a foster home, had been a frequent visitor to the hall.

When I came on shift one afternoon, the other supervisors were chatting in the lounge about Jessica, lamenting her fate, which they believed would