Yoshiko Uchida
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Yoshiko Uchida (November 24, 1921 - June 21, 1992) was a Japanese-American writer.
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[edit] Life
Yoshiko Uchida was the daughter of Japanese immigrants Takashi and Iku Uchida. Her father came to the United States from Japan in 1903 and worked for the San Francisco offices of Mitsui and Company. Yoshiko and her sister Keiko were both nisei, or second-generation Japanese-Americans, born in the United States.
By the age of ten, Uchida was writing stories. "Being the child of frugal immigrant parents, I wrote them on brown wrapping paper which I cut up and bound into booklets . . . I also kept a journal of important events which began the day I graduated from elementary school . . . By putting these special happenings into words and writing them down, I was trying to hold onto and preserve the magic as well as the joy and sadness of certain moments of my life...I guess that's really what books and writing are really about." [1]
Uchida graduated early from high school and enrolled at University of California, Berkeley at sixteen. The Uchidas were living in Berkeley, California and Yoshiko was in her senior year at U.C. Berkeley when the Japanese attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Soon after, President Roosevelt ordered all Japanese-Americans on the west coast to be rounded up and imprisoned in internment camps. Thousands of Japanese and Japanese-Americans, regardless of their U.S. citizenship, lost their homes, property, jobs, civil liberties and human dignity.
The Uchidas were not spared. Takashi was questioned by the FBI and he and his family, including Yoshiko, were interned for three years, first at Tanforan Racetrack in California and then in Topaz, Utah. In the camps, Yoshiko taught school and had the chance to view not only the injustices which the Americans were perpetrating, but the varying reactions of Japanese-Americans towards their ill-treatment.
In 1943 Uchida was accepted at 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, citizenship, identity, and cross-cultural relationships.
Over the course of her career Uchida published more than thirty books, including nonfiction for adults and fiction for children and teenagers. She died in 1992.
[edit] Work
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 and cultural identities.
She is also known for her childrens' novels, having been praised as "almost single-handedly creat[ing] a body of Japanese-American literature for children, where none existed before." [2]. In addition to Journey to Topaz, many of her other novels including Picture Bride, A Jar of Dreams and The Bracelet deal with Japanese-American impressions of major historical events including World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II, 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."[3]
[edit] Bibliography
This is a partial list of Uchida's published work.
- Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation
- The Invisible Thread: An Autobiography
- The Terrible Leak
- Picture Bride
- The Dancing Kettle and Other Japanese Folk Tales
- The Magic Listening Cap: More Folk Tales from Japan
- Two Foolish Cats
- The Happiest Ending
- The Magic Purse
- Samurai of Gold Hill
- The Sea of Gold, and Other Tales from Japan
- The Birthday Visitor
- The Rooster Who Understood Japanese
- Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family
- Sumi's Prize
- Takao and Grandfather
- A Jar of Dreams
- Sumi and the Goat and the Tokyo Express
- The Wise Old Woman
- The Bracelet
[edit] Awards
- Ford Foundation research fellowship in Japan, 1952
- Children's Spring Book Festival honor award, New York Herald Tribune, 1955, for The Magic Listening Cap
- Notable Book citation, American Library Association, 1972, for Journey to Topaz
- Medal for best juvenile book by a California author, Commonwealth Club of California, 1972, for Samurai of Gold Hill;
- Award of Merit, California Association of Teachers of English, 1973
- Citation, Contra Costa chapter of Japanese American Citizens League, 1976, for outstanding contribution to the cultural development of society
- Morris S. Rosenblatt Award, Utah State Historical Society, 1981, for article, "Topaz, City of Dust"
- Distinguished Service Award, University of Oregon, 1981
- Commonwealth Club of California medal, 1982, for A Jar of Dreams
- Award from Berkeley Chapter of Japanese American Citizens League, 1983
- School Library Journal, Best Book of the Year citation, 1983, for The Best Bad Thing
- New York Public Library, Best Book of the Year citation, 1983, for The Best Bad Thing
- Best Book of 1985 citation, Bay Area Book Reviewers, 1985, for The Happiest Ending
- Child Study Association of America, Children's Book of the Year citation, 1985, for The Happiest Ending
- San Mateo and San Francisco Reading Associations, Young Authors' Hall of Fame award, 1985, for The Happiest Ending
- Friends of Children and Literature award, 1987, for A Jar of Dreams
- Japanese American of the Biennium award, Japanese American Citizens Leagues, 1988, for outstanding achievement
[edit] Sources
- "Yoshiko Uchida" in Encyclopedia of World Biography
- Grice, Helena. "Yoshiko Uchida" in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 312: Asian American Writers. Gale, 2005, pp. 304-309.
