Yoshiko Uchida
(1921–1992)

The author of many books for readers of all ages, Yoshiko Uchida was especially noted for her graceful, inspiring celebration of Japanese culture and her Japanese American heritage.

Uchida was born in 1921 in Alameda, California, and grew up in the nearby city of Berkeley. Uchida's parents were born in Japan and had immigrated to the United States some years before. Thus Yoshiko was a nisei–a second-generation Japanese American. Her father was a businessman, and her mother was a homemaker and a poet. Uchida's mother often read Japanese folktales to Yoshiko and her older sister Keiko. Uchida later included many of these stories in her first book, The Dancing Kettle (1949).

After attending local schools, Uchida enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley. As she was studying for her final exams on Sunday, December 7, 1941, news came over the radio that Japanese forces had attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The United States immediately entered World War II against Japan and Germany.

Less than three months later, the federal government issued an order requiring that Japanese Americans be evacuated from their homes and imprisoned indefinitely at "Wartime Relocation Agency (WRA) camps." This policy was known as internment. In early May 1942, the Uchida family was uprooted to a makeshift barracks surrounded by barbed wire at a racetrack. After five months there, they were sent to Topaz, a WRA camp in the Utah desert.

Uchida later recorded in a number of works her family's experiences. In May 1943, she was released from Topaz in order to begin a graduate fellowship at Smith College in Massachusetts. Shortly afterwards, her parents were also released. 40 years later, in 1983, a government commission concluded that a "grave injustice" had been done to Japanese Americans, who were overwhelmingly loyal to their adopted land. The commission declared that the causes of internment were race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

Uchida, who had taught elementary school while she was living at the camp in Utah, earned a master's degree in education at Smith College. Moving to New York City shortly after the war ended in 1945, Uchida worked at a variety of secretarial jobs, which gave her more time than teaching did to write. During the early 1950s, she produced a steady stream of children's tales. In 1952, she won a fellowship from the Ford Foundation for study in Japan. For two years she collected folk tales there and became deeply interested in Japanese arts and crafts. Uchida recalls, "I came home aware of a new dimension to myself as a Japanese American and with new respect and admiration for the culture that had made my parents what they were."

In addition to her stories for children, Uchida authored a number of nonfiction works for adults. In We Do Not Work Alone: The Thoughts of Kanjiro Kawai (1953), she explored Japanese folk art. In 1982, she published her memoirs of wartime imprisonment in Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family. In 1987, Uchida published her first novel for adults, Picture Bride, which focused on the courage and strength of early Japanese women immigrants.

Uchida died in 1992. In her final years, she worked steadily, producing two especially notable tales for children, The Magic Purse (1993) and The Bracelet (1993). Commenting in 1984 on her life and goals as a writer for young people, Uchida remarked: "I feel that children need the sense of community that comes through knowing about the past. All of us must understand our own past in order to move ahead into the future. I feel it's so important for Japanese American–and all Asian American–children to be aware of their history and culture, and to understand some of the traditions, hopes, and values of the early immigrants. At the same time, I write for all children, and I try to write about values and feelings that are universal."

Uchida grew up in northern California on the eastern edges of the San Francisco Bay, and much of her fiction is set in the Bay Area. Built on a hilly peninsula, San Francisco is a large port, a cultural center, and one of the nation's most picturesque cities. Its many landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Telegraph Hill, Fisherman's Wharf, and Chinatown draw countless tourists annually. The University of California at Berkeley continues to set standards of excellence in education nationwide.

The population of San Francisco and the Bay Area includes one of the largest Chinese communities in North America. The region is also home to many Japanese Americans. From 1910 to 1940, Angel Island, the largest island in San Francisco Bay, was the entry point for Asian immigrants to the United States.

A  |  B  |  C  |  D  |  E  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  I  |  J  |  K  |  L  |  M
N  |  O  |  P  |  Q  |  R  |  S  |  T  |  U  |  V  |  W  |  X  |  Y  |  Z