THIS book is the autobiography of Yoshiko Uchida; who was uprooted
with her Japanese American family and put in a concentration camp.
Uchida lived with her mother, father, and sister just a few miles
outside of Berkeley, California. Uchida was born in the U.S. Even
though she was a citizen of the United States, every one treated
her as a foreigner. Uchida had attended California high school
and had many American friends. Yoshika and her family were only
one family out of the hundreds of others that were put into the
concentration camps during WW 2. When Yoshika went out to the
library on the day that Japan bombed pearl harbor she came back
home to find an FBI agent who had come with three other agents
earlier and taken their father away to a concentration camp in
Wyoming.
A few months later they were told to pack their bags and get ready
to leave the next week. Yoshika and her family loaded onto a train
and were taken to a concentration camp. After being in the camp
for a while, her sister and a few other educated women started
a school. The schools eventually closed down. The children were
no longer able to go to school and the teachers could not teach.
Later their father got out of Wyoming and came down to the concentration
camp to be with them.
After being in the camp for a couple of months a soldier came
to the horse stall that they were staying in and told them to
pack their bags. They were going to another concentration camp
in Utah, called Topaz. The next day a soldier came and took them
to the train [every one else in the concentration camp was going
too] that would take them to Topaz. Uchida spent five months in
Topaz.
During those five months she helped organize another school and
had to deal with ferocious dust storms that covered her completely
with dust One time while she was in Topaz, a guard shot and killed
a man who he said was trying to escape. At the end of the fifth
month Yoshika Uchida and Kay got permission to leave. Yoshiko
was going to live with one of her friends over the summer. After
the summer, Yoshika went back to college to get her degree for
teaching.
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