Yoshiko Uchida (November 24, 1921 – June 21, 1992) was an award-winning Japanese American writer of children's books based on aspects of Japanese and Japanese American history and culture. A series of books, starting with ''Journey to Topaz'' (1971) take place during the era of the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. She also authored an adult memoir centering on her and her family's wartime incarceration (''Desert Exile,'' 1982), a young adult version her life story (''Invisible Thread'', 1991), and a novel centering on a Japanese American family (''Picture Bride'', 1987).

Early life

Yoshiko Uchida was born in Alameda, California, on November 24, 1921, the daughter of Takashi ("Dwight," 1884-1971) and Iku Umegaki Uchida (1893-1966). She had an older sister, Keiko ("Kay," 1918-2008, mother of former New York Times book critic

Michiko Kakutani Michiko Kakutani (born January 9, 1955) is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for ''The New York Times'' from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998. Early life ...

and married to mathematician

Shizuo Kakutani was a Japanese-American mathematician, best known for his eponymous fixed-point theorem. Biography Kakutani attended Tohoku University in Sendai, where his advisor was Tatsujirō Shimizu. At one point he spent two years at the Institute for ...

). She graduated from high school at sixteen and enrolled at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Incarceration

The Uchidas lived in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

and Yoshiko was in her senior year at U.C. Berkeley when the Japanese attacked the naval base at

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...

in 1941. Soon after, President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

ordered all Japanese Americans on the west coast to be rounded up and imprisoned in internment camps. Uchida's father was questioned by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

, and the whole family was interned for three years, first at

Tanforan Racetrack Tanforan Racetrack, also known as Tanforan Park, was a thoroughbred horse racing facility in San Bruno, on the San Francisco Peninsula, in California. It was in operation from November 4, 1899, to 1964. The horse racing track and buildings were con ...

in California, and then in

Topaz, Utah The Topaz War Relocation Center, also known as the Central Utah Relocation Center (Topaz) and briefly as the Abraham Relocation Center, was an American concentration camp which housed Americans of Japanese descent and immigrants who had come t ...

. In the camps, Yoshiko taught school and had the chance to view the injustices that the Americans were perpetrating and the varying reactions of Japanese Americans towards their ill-treatment. In 1943 Uchida was accepted to graduate school at

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

in Massachusetts, and allowed to leave the camp, but her years there left a deep impression. Her 1971 novel, '' Journey to Topaz'', is fiction, but closely follows her own experiences, and many of her other books deal with issues of

ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

citizenship Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...

, identity, and cross-cultural relationships.

Career

Uchida became widely known for her 1982 autobiography '' Desert Exile'', one of several important autobiographical works by Japanese Americans, who were interned that portray internment as a pivotal moment in the formation of the author's

personal Personal may refer to: Aspects of persons' respective individualities * Privacy * Personality * Personal, personal advertisement, variety of classified advertisement used to find romance or friendship Companies * Personal, Inc., a Washington, ...

and

cultural Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...

identities. She is also known for her children's novels, having been praised as "almost single-handedly creating a body of Japanese American literature for children, where none existed before." In addition to '' Journey to Topaz'', many of her other novels including ''

Picture Bride The term picture bride refers to the practice in the early 20th century of immigrant workers (chiefly Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean) in Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States and Canada, as well as Brazil selecting brides from their nat ...

'', '' A Jar of Dreams'', and '' The Bracelet'' deal with Japanese American impressions of major historical events including

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, and the racism endured by Japanese Americans during these years.

I try to stress the positive aspects of life that I want children to value and cherish. I hope they can be caring human beings who don't think in terms of labels—foreigners or Asians or whatever—but think of people as human beings. If that comes across, then I've accomplished my purpose.Grice, Helena. "Yoshiko Uchida" in ''Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 312: Asian American Writers''. Gale, 2005.

Over the course of her career, Uchida published more than thirty books, including non-fiction for adults, and

fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...

for children and teenagers. She died in 1992.

Work on Japanese folk pottery

In 1952, Uchida received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to study the folk pottery movement in Japan. She spent two years researching and becoming acquainted with major figures in that artistic current, including

Shoji Hamada A is a door, window or room divider used in traditional Japanese architecture, consisting of Transparency and translucency, translucent (or transparent) sheets on a lattice frame. Where light transmission is not needed, the similar but opaqu ...

and Kanjiro Kawai. Uchida wrote a book with Kawai, ''We Do Not Work Alone: The Thoughts of Kanjiro Kawai''. She collected several pots by Hamada and Kawai that she later donated to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

Bibliography

This is a partial list of Uchida's published work. Yoshiko Uchida wrote 34 books. * '' The Dancing Kettle and Other Japanese Folk Tales'' (1949) * '' New Friends for Susan'' (1951) * '' The Magic Listening Cap: More Folk Tales from Japan'' (1955) * ''The Full Circle'' (1957) * '' Takao and Grandfather's Sword'' (1958) * '' The Promised Year'' (1959) * '' Mik and the Prowler'' (1960) * '' Rokubei and the Thousand Rice Bowls'' (1962) * '' The Forever Christmas Tree'' (1963) * '' Sumi's Prize'' (1964) * '' The Sea of Gold, and Other Tales from Japan'' (1965) * '' In-Between Miya'' (1967) * '' Hisako's Mysteries'' (1969) * '' Sumi and the Goat and the Tokyo Express'' (1969) * '' Makoto, The Smallest Boy'' (1970) * '' Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese American Evacuation'' (1971) * '' Samurai of Gold Hill'' (1972) * '' The Birthday Visitor'' (1975) * '' The Rooster who Understood Japanese'' (1976) * '' The Bracelet'' (1976) * '' Journey Home'' (1978) (originally published as a short story) * '' Jar of Dreams'' (1981) * '' Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family'' (Autobiography) (1982) * ''

The Best Bad Thing ''The Best Bad Thing'' was originally a book authored by Yoshiko Uchida. A screenplay was developed and a film released in 1997. The story is set on the U.S. west coast during 1935 when the U.S. economy was still recovering from the effects of the ...

'' (1983) * '' The Happiest Ending'' (1985) * ''Picture Bride'' (1987) * '' Two Foolish Cats'' (1987) * '' The Terrible Leak'' (1990) * '' The Big Book for Peace'' (1990) (Illustrated by

Allen Say Allen Say (born James Allen Koichi Moriwaki Seii in 1937; surname written in Japanese) is a Japanese-American writer and illustrator. He is best known for ''Grandfather's Journey'', a children's picture book detailing his grandfather's voyage fr ...

) * '' Invisible Thread: An Autobiography'' (1991) * '' The Magic Purse'' (1993) * '' The Wise Old Woman'' (1994)

References

External links

*Yoshiko Uchid
papers
an
photographs
(some materials available online) at

The Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

Guide to the Yoshiko Uchida papers at the University of Oregon
{{DEFAULTSORT:Uchida, Yoshiko 1921 births 1992 deaths People from Alameda, California Japanese-American internees American educators of Japanese descent American writers of Japanese descent American women novelists American women writers of Asian descent American autobiographers American novelists of Asian descent American short story writers American women short story writers American short story writers of Asian descent University of California, Berkeley alumni Smith College alumni Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American women writers Women autobiographers 20th-century American short story writers Novelists from California American women non-fiction writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers