Farewell to Manzanar

After a couple of years, sociologists recommend that the families in the camp begin eating their meals together. Why is the scientists’ concern too late?1

chpt 5

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The sociologists finding came too late because the families had already fallen apart. From the text:

Most people resented this; they griped and grumbled. They were in the habit of eating with their friends. And until the mess hall system itself could be changed, not much could really be done. It was too late. My own family, after three years of mess hall living, collapsed as an integrated unit. Whatever dignity or feeling of filial strength we may have known before December 1941 was lost, and we did not recover it until many years after the war, not until after Papa died and we began to come together, trying to fill the vacuum his passing left in all our lives.
Source(s)

Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki; Houston, James D.. Farewell to Manzanar (p. 37). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.