Life Experiences in Farewell to Manzanar The book, Farewell to Manzanar was the story of a young Japanese girl coming of age in the interment camp located in Owens Valley, California. Less than two months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which stated that the War Department had the right to declare which people were a threat to the country, and move them wherever they so pleased1. Since the West Coast had a large number of Japanese immigrants at the time, it was basically an act that authorized the government to remove Japanese r