Uchida, Yoshiko (1921–1992)

American writer. Name variations: Yohziko Uchida. Pronunciation: Oo-CHEE-dah. Born on November 24, 1921, in Alameda, California; died after a stroke on June 21, 1992, in Berkeley, California; daughter of Dwight Takashi Uchida (a businessman) and Iku (Umegaki) Uchida; University of California, Berkeley, A.B. (cum laude), 1942; Smith College, M.Ed., 1944.

Was an elementary school teacher in Japanese relocation center in Utah (1942–43); taught in Frank-ford Friends' School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1944–45); was membership secretary, Institute of Pacific Relations (1946–47); was secretary, United Student Christian Council (1947–52); full-time writer (1952–57); was secretary, University of California, Berkeley (1957–62); full-time writer (1962–92).

Selected writings for children:

The Dancing Kettle and Other Japanese Folk Tales (illus. by Richard C. Jones, Harcourt, 1949); New Friends for Susan (illus. by Henry Sugimoto, Scribner, 1951); (self-illustrated) The Magic Listening Cap—More Folk Tales from Japan (Harcourt, 1955); (self-illustrated) The Full Circle (Friendship, 1957); Takao and Grandfather's Sword (illus. by William M. Hutchinson, Harcourt, 1958); The Promised Year (illus. by Hutchinson, Harcourt, 1959); Mik and the Prowler (illus. by Hutchinson, Harcourt, 1960); Rokubei and the Thousand Rice Bowls (illus. by Kazue Mizumura, Scribner, 1962); The Forever Christmas Tree (illus. by Mizumura, Scribner, 1963); Sumi's Prize (illus. by Mizumura, Scribner, 1964); The Sea of Gold, and Other Tales from Japan (illus. by Marianne Yamaguchi, Scribner, 1965); Sumi's Special Happening (illus. by Mizumura, Scribner, 1966); In-Between Miya (illus. by Susan Bennett, Scribner, 1967); Hisako's Mysteries (illus. by Bennett, Scribner, 1969); Sumi and the Goat and the Tokyo Express (illus. by Mizumura, Scribner, 1969); Makoto, the Smallest Boy: A Story of Japan (illus. by Akihito Shirawaka, Crowell, 1970); Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation (illus. by Donald Carrick, Scribner, 1971); Samurai of Gold Hill (illus. by Ati Forberg, Scribner, 1972); The Birthday Visitor (illus. by Charles Robinson, Scribner, 1975); The Rooster Who Understood Japanese (illus. by Robinson, Scribner, 1976); Journey Home (sequel to Journey to Topaz, illus. by Robinson, McElderry, 1978); A Jar of Dreams (McElderry, 1981); The Best Bad Thing (sequel to A Jar of Dreams, McElderry, 1983); Tabi: Journey through Time, Stories of the Japanese in America (United Methodist Publishing, 1984); The Happiest Ending (sequel to The Best Bad Thing, McElderry, 1985); The Two Foolish Cats (illus. by Margot Zemach, McElderry, 1987); The Terrible Leak (Creative Education, 1990); The Magic Purse (illus. by Keiko Narahashi, McElderry, 1993); The Bracelet (illus. by Joanna Yardley, Philomel, 1993); The Wise Old Woman (illus. by Martin Springett, McElderry, 1994).

Selected writings for adults:

We Do Not Work Alone: The Thoughts of Kanjiro Kawai (Folk Art Society, Japan, 1953); (trans. of English portions) SoetsuYanagi, ed., Shoji Hamada (Asahi Shimbun Publishing, 1961); The History of Sycamore Church (Sycamore Congregational Church, 1974); Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family (University of Washington Press, 1982); Picture Bride (novel, Northland Press, 1987); The Invisible Thread (autobiography for young adults, J. Messner, 1991). Author of regular column, "Letter from San Francisco," in Craft Horizons, 1958–61. Contributor of adult stories and articles to newspapers and periodicals, including Woman's Day, Gourmet, Utah Historical Quarterly, Far East, and California Monthly.

Yoshiko Uchida's appreciation for her Japanese heritage inspired her to write many books on Japanese culture for readers of all ages. "In fiction, the graceful and lively books of Yoshiko Uchida have drawn upon the author's own childhood to document the Japanese-American experience for middle-grade readers," noted Patty Campbell in The New York Times Book Review. Among her nonfiction works for adults are studies of Japanese folk artists such as We Do Not Work Alone: The Thoughts of Kanjiro Kawai, as well as a memoir of wartime imprisonment, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Americans of Japanese descent were incarcerated by order of the U.S. government. Uchida was a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, when her family was sent to Tanforan Racetracks, where thousands of Japanese-Americans lived in stables and barracks. After five months at Tanforan, they were moved to Topaz, a guarded camp in the Utah desert. Uchida taught in the elementary schools there until the spring of 1943, when she was released to accept a fellowship for graduate study at Smith College. Her parents were also released that year.

Uchida earned a master's degree in education, but because teaching limited her time for writing, she found a secretarial job that allowed her to write in the evenings. "I was writing short stories at the time," she said, "sending them to the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and Harper's—and routinely receiving printed rejection slips. After a time, however, the slips contained encouraging penciled notes and a New Yorker editor even met with me to suggest that I write about my concentration camp experiences…. And many of the short sto ries I wrote during those days were published eventually in literature anthologies for young people."

By the time Woman's Day accepted one of her stories, Uchida had found that writing for children promised more success. Her first book, The Dancing Kettle and Other Japanese Folk Tales, was well received upon its publication in 1949, and when a Ford Foundation grant enabled Uchida to visit Japan, she collected more traditional tales. In addition, she became fascinated with Japanese arts and crafts, and learned more about them from philosopher Soetsu Yanagi and other founders of the Folk Art Movement in Japan. But her most important gain from the visit, she wrote, was the awareness "of a new dimension of myself as a Japanese-American and [a] deepened … respect and admiration for the culture that had made my parents what they were."

The final children's books Uchida wrote before her death in 1992 reflect her interests not only in Japan but also in her Japanese-American heritage. The Magic Purse, for instance, offers a tale with many mythical Japanese elements. In the book, a poor farmer journeying through a swamp encounters a beautiful maiden held captive by the lord of the swamp. She persuades him to carry a letter for her to her parents in another swamp, giving him a magic purse as a reward for his efforts. The purse contains gold coins that forever multiply, and the coins make the farmer a rich man, even as he returns year after year to the swamp to make peace with the swamp lord and to remember the maiden. The Bracelet, meanwhile, is set in California during World War II and features a seven-year-old Japanese-American girl, Emi, who is being shipped off to an internment camp with her mother and sister; her father has already been taken to another camp. Once at the camp (Tanforan Racetracks, the same camp that the author lived in as a girl), Emi realizes that she has lost the gold bracelet that her best friend Laurie gave to her as a parting gift. Despite being despondent over the loss of the bracelet, Emi comes to understand that her memory of Laurie is something more precious than the bracelet, because the memory will stay with her forever. In The Wise Old Woman, Uchida's final children's book (published 46 years after her first), the author tells the story of a small village in medieval Japan in which the cruel young village lord has decreed that any person reaching 70 years of age must be taken into the mountains and left to die. A young farmer, unable to bear the thought of taking his mother away and letting her die, instead builds a secret room where she can hide. Later, a neighboring ruler comes to the village and declares that the village will be destroyed unless its citizens can carry out three seemingly impossible tasks. When the farmer's mother proves to be the only one capable of figuring out how to complete

the tasks, the cruel young lord realizes the error of his ways and revokes the age decree.

The death of her mother in 1966 prompted Uchida to write a book for her parents "and the other first-generation Japanese (the Issei), who had endured so much." The result was Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation. Every book Uchida wrote after Journey to Topaz responded to the growing need for identity among third generation Japanese-Americans. "Through my books I hope to give young Asian-Americans a sense of their past and to reinforce their self-esteem and self-knowledge," she wrote. "At the same time, I want to dispel the stereotypic image still held by many non-Asians about the Japanese and write about them as real people. I hope to convey the strength of spirit and the sense of hope and purpose I have observed in many first-generation Japanese. Beyond that, I write to celebrate our common humanity, for the basic elements of humanity are present in all our strivings."

sources and suggested reading:

Children's Literature Review. Vol. 6. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1984.

Something about the Author Autobiography Series. Vol. 1. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1986.

Twentieth-Century Children's Writers. 3rd ed. Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 1989.

periodicals:

Children's Book World. November 5, 1967.

Five Owls. January–February, 1994.

The New York Times Book Review. February 9, 1986; November 14, 1993, p. 21.

Publishers Weekly. October 24, 1994, p. 61.

School Library Journal. November 1993, p. 103; December 1993, p. 95; July 1995, p. 75.

Young Readers' Review. January 1967.

obituary and other sources:

Chicago Tribune. June 28, 1992, section 2, p. 6.

Los Angeles Times. June 27, 1992, p. A26.

The New York Times. June 24, 1992, p. A18.

School Library Journal. August 1992, p. 23.

collections:

The Kerlan Collection holds Uchida's manuscripts for In-Between Miya and Mik and the Prowler. Other manuscript collections are at the University of Oregon Library, Eugene, and the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Contemporary Authors, The Gale Group, 1999