To me she at first was just Jeanne Houston, my housing officer in 1970 at Cowell College in the early days of UC Santa Cruz, a younger Nisei with a sunny smile who seemed more like a peer than administrator. We’d share breakfast in the Cowell Commons and not once did she ever mention camp or the war.

So I was surprised a few years after graduating to learn she’d published her memoir as Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, even more surprised when a TV-movie was announced based on her book. By then I was an acting student in San Francisco and it was amazing to reunite with her and husband James Houston at the audition with John Korty.

I will always wonder if she put in a good word for me to be cast as the JACL villain, Frank Nishi, a thinly-disguised version of LA JACL leader Fred Tayama. Here’s my big scene, the mess hall meeting that opens with a line shouted by novelist Shawn Wong. The full movie is available by special arrangement on DVD only from the Japanese American National Museum giftshop:

I researched my role by studying Art Hansen’s groundbreaking essay, “The Manzanar Riot: An Ethnic Perspective,” (reprinted for you to read in his 2018 anthology, Barbed Voices), and the experience continued my journey toward understanding the nature of Japanese American resistance to wartime incarceration.

The film aired in an era when you only had three channels to choose from at night, so Farewell to Manzanar and the story of the Manzanar revolt commanded the attention of the nation for one evening in March 1976, with fictionalized versions of Harry Ueno and Joe Kurihara brought to life onscreen.

After an absence of decades, I was glad to be able to see Jeanne again in 2013 when I moderated a screening and discussion of the then-newly released DVD of Farewell to Manzanar as part of “Speaking Up! Democracy, Justice, Dignity,” the fourth national conference of the Japanese American National Museum held in Seattle to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

I recently spoke with Jeanne to discuss excerpting her book’s haunting final chapter, “Ten Thousand Voices,” for the postwar section of the Penguin Classics anthology (we later had to trim selections due to space). She said she was thinking of writing a musical based on the camp talent shows at Manzanar. I’m saddened to learn of her passing on December 21. She will be missed, but she leaves a lasting legacy.

UPDATES: Thanks to George Toshio Johnston at the Pacific Citizen for reaching out for stories in remembrance of Jeanne:  “Author Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston Dead at 90.”

Thanks too to the Nichi Bei News for quoting from this blog.

And going back to my Santa Cruz roots, I spoke about Jeanne with Rachel Anne Goodman for her radio program/podcast “Talk of the Bay, which aired on Thursday, January 23, 2025, on KSQD-FM (K-SQUID) in Santa Cruz. You can stream the podcast here; my segment begins at the 12:40 mark.