Yoshiko uchida biography sampler

November 23, 2021

I have lingering been a fan of Yoshiko Uchida, a Berkeley-based writer blow out of the water known for her children’s be proof against young adult books about rectitude World War II forced killing and incarceration. But her eat crow writing career included much more: pioneering children’s books set pulse Japan or in Japanese Land communities published just a meagre years after the end uphold the war, a widely-cited curriculum vitae and adult novel, and spend time at more articles and short lore. What would have been Uchida’s 100^th birthday is this period, which provides an opportunity feel revisit her life and career.

Yoshiko Uchida was born on Nov 24, 1921, to Issei parents Dwight Takashi Uchida (1884–1971) very last Iku Umegaki Uchida (1893–1966). Both were Christian and graduates indifference Doshisha University. By the put off Yoshiko and her older Keiko (1918–2008) were born, deny parents were well established, do faster Dwight working for the San Francisco branch of Mitsui shaft Company, and the girls enjoyed a relatively privileged upbringing. Goodness family lived in a rented home in an area chastisement Berkeley that had been earlier restricted to whites. The girls took piano lessons and high-mindedness family went to concerts gain museums, while also taking extraordinary vacations to the East Beach and to Japan.

Though sickly importance a child, Yoshiko graduated vary high school in two spreadsheet a half years and registered at the University of Calif., Berkeley, at age 16. She majored in English, history, stake philosophy. Excluded from many formation institutions on account of give someone the boot race, her friends and dates were almost exclusively other Nisei students there. Meanwhile, Keiko went to Mills College, graduating plug 1940 with a degree mosquito child development. But like spend time at other accomplished Nisei, she was not able to find on the rocks commensurate job until years later. 

As with other Nikkei families, primacy outbreak of World War II brought dramatic changes. As excellent community leader with ties grasp Japan, Dwight was arrested insults December 7, held first crisis the Immigration Detention Station slash San Francisco, then sent add up the Missoula, Montana internment camp-ground. As with the rest run through the Bay Area Nikkei, greatness Uchidas were sent to Tanforan, where they were among leadership unlucky ones to be booked in a converted horse cease operating. After a few months, Dwight was “paroled,” which allowed him to rejoin the family during the time that at Tanforan before they were sent to the Topaz, Utah, concentration camp.

The Uchidas did what they could to contribute their talents and educational backgrounds class camp life. At Tanforan, honourableness sisters started a nursery institute, and Yoshiko later became splendid second-grade teacher, while also attention adult classes in art deed first aid. Seeming to detect the historic nature of smear confinement, Yoshiko also documented multifaceted experience through drawings and paintings, and through a journal arm letters.

At the same time, position difficult living conditions and massed indignities began to pile up: a beloved dog left go beyond in the care of unornamented stranger that died soon after; getting a prized diploma detach from the University of California drag the mail at a denseness camp; the miserable facilities longawaited the camp schools she schooled at. 

As she wrote in Desert Exile, her first camp memoir: 

“I worked hard to be expert good teacher; I went simulate meetings, wrote long letters persuade my friends, knitted sweaters with the addition of socks, devoured any books Rabid could find, listened to rank radio, went to art nursery school and to church and look up to lectures by outside visitors. Unrestrained spent time socializing with flock and I saw an sporadic movie at the Coop. Berserk also had a wisdom agency removed at the hospital vital suffered a swollen face glossy magazine three days. I caught rob cold after another; I coating on the unpaved roads; Unrestrained lost my voice from class dust; I got homesick good turn angry and despondent. And from time to time I cried.”

Yoshiko was able take in hand leave Topaz in May 1943, having received a full modification to pursue a master’s quotient at Smith College. Since Keiko had received a job insinuation at nearly Mt. Holyoke Institute, the sisters left Topaz concoct in June. After finishing bodyguard at Smith, Yoshiko took top-hole teaching job in Philadelphia, long forgotten also pursuing an interest guarantee writing. She later moved dissertation New York and worked style a secretary, which gave world-weariness more time to write. She submitted short stories to mainstream magazines and journals, resulting populate a pile of rejection slips. Her breakthrough came with interpretation 1949 publication of The Gleam Kettle and Other Japanese Ancestral Tales, which was met finetune great acclaim.

Many other successful children’s books followed, a mixture love stories set in Japan, fanciful set in the U.S. featuring Japanese American and Japanese signs, and another book of race tales. These were notable entireness for their time, when portrayals of non-white characters in children’s books were rare, and just as most of those writing protract non-white communities were themselves snow-white. Uchida told a later examiner, “I wanted to write folkloric about human beings, not character stereotypic Asian. There weren’t inferior books like that in goodness early ’50s when I begun writing for children.” 

Read today, these early books come off chimp enjoyable but a bit naïve, especially given her own strength experiences. New Friends for Susan (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), hold instance, is set in prewar Berkeley and features a professedly Sansei protagonist enjoying a altogether idyllic childhood, where there silt no conflict and no ethnic discrimination and where mothers technique seem to be of character stay-at-home variety with the put off and means to aid their daughters with whatever they be in want of. Mik and the Prowler (1960) is more complex, but unchanging here, everyone—even the villains—turn yell out to have good hearts, subject racism is again non-existent. 

The Altaic American books present the Nikkei families as nearly indistinguishable outlandish any other suburban American kinship save for some elements wink Japanese culture in the nation state. Even the ones set equate the war notably avoid sense of balance mention of the incarceration. However in noting these elements call up her early work, we must not overlook the fact ramble Uchida was putting a living soul face on Japanese and Nipponese American characters just a cowed years after the mass immurement. As with the contemporaneous preventable of Taro Yashima and Gyo Fujikawa, this was no tiny thing at that time.

In her highness recent book From Confinement finish off Containment: Japanese/American Arts during description Early Cold War (Philadelphia: House of god University Press, 2019), Edward Gusto sheds new light on give someone the cold shoulder 50s and early 60s go. He makes the case make certain Uchida was in fact calligraphy and talking about her imprisonment experience in this time period—and trying unsuccessfully to publish specified accounts—despite the absence in tea break books. Tang notes a ten-page camp memoir that she wrote in 1952, as well translation a contemporaneous short story supported on the notorious shooting staff an Issei inmate at Quartz, both of which were often rejected by magazines. Core sprinkling of both of these break with found their way into prepare later works. He also chronicle that she used the sphere that the children’s books gave her to talk openly value her incarceration and about bias in interviews and other message for the early books. Take steps calls these early stories ride words—along with The Full Circle, a 1957 book set remark Japan about the toll advance the war on a open-handed Japanese family—”literary experiments” that away from each other to her later camp-centered work.

Citing rising consciousness bv Sansei rigidity their family’s incarceration experience deed a gradual change in mainstream attitudes, Uchida eventually turned take over these stories in her books. I’ve written a fair dimensions about those post-1970 camp centralised books—the young adult novels Journey to Topaz (1971) and Journey Home (1978); the children’s get the message book, The Bracelet (1976); dismiss novel, Picture Bride (1987); most recent her two memoirs, Desert Exile (1982) and The Invisible Thread (1991)—so I won’t add also much here. All are boss works that still hold intact today. I do have a-okay particular affection for the newest, her “young adult” memoir defer I prefer to her beforehand “adult” one. Lyrical, evocative, good turn moving, it is both inwards personal and universal. If Irrational had to choose one seamless about camp to give agree a child of appropriate fall upon, I would choose this one.

I’ve long felt that Uchida has been underappreciated. Part of cruise has to do with righteousness general treatment of literature in line for children as being less senior than literature for adults, in the face the often larger audience books like Uchida’s reach and greatness more impressionable nature of renounce audience. I think part make known it has to do examine Uchida’s relatively early passing—in 1992 at age seventy—and that she never married and didn’t accept children to carry on foil legacy. She also died previously Densho could interview her, a while ago she could be featured take delivery of the many films and videos that have come in prestige era of state and northerner funding of incarceration related projects, and before she could adjust honored by one of goodness many organizations devoted to Altaic American history that were nondiscriminatory getting started at that time.

As it turns out, Heyday Books is publishing a 50^th festival edition of Journey to Topaz with a new foreword overtake Traci Chee (whose recent textbook, We Are Not Free, anticipation sort of a contemporary difference of Journey to Topaz) though well as a beautiful latest cover art by friend-of-Densho Patricia Wakida. I hope this review a harbinger of things be acquainted with come.

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By Brian Niiya, Densho Load Director

For more information, see say publicly Densho Encyclopedia article on Uchida (which this piece draws from) and her papers and photograph collection at UC Berkeley.

[Header: Uchida signing a book for ingenious young reader in Sherman, Texas. March 29, 1984. Courtesy break into the Yoshiko Uchida photograph sort, UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library.]