Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family (Classics of Asian American Literature) by Yoshiko Uchida

Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family (Classics of Asian American Literature) Reviews

• 
  TPK

  OK, I'll be honest -- the amateurish cover design of this book at first made me doubt whether the contents would be worth the read. Fortunately, this book is one of the sterling examples of the wisdom inherent in the phrase "Don't judge a book by its cover." Uchida's first-person narrative of her family's internment during World War II begins well before the war, affectionately describing her often idyllic childhood in Berkeley, California and the way her Issei parents raised both her and her older sister with a blend of both Japanese and American cultures. This background information, told with loving details, makes the shock of Pearl Harbor, America's entry into the war and the almost immediate detention of Japanese people in the United States all the more brutal and poignant to readers.
  
  Uchida mentions some of the widespread rumors -- that Japanese people in America had helped conduct espionage for the Japanese government, that they cut arrows into the sugarcane fields to guide the Pearl Harbor bombers, and other scurrilous stories that were later completely refuted -- that led American military commanders and American citizens alike to condone the suspension of Japanese American constitutional rights and the process of internment "for their own protection." Many people who came of age during this time, including my own grandfather, believed in such rumors to their dying day and never trusted people of Japanese ancestry again. Others, born long after the war ended, have never even heard of the American concentration camps where thousands of Japanese nationals and American citizens were warehoused and hidden away, and where some of them died. For these and other reasons, I wish this book were better known and more widely read. American citizens in particular need to know what their government did under the influence of a race-based panic, how horrific it was, and how careful we should be never to do it again. What was done to one group could easily be done to any group at all; what threatens the rights of one group thus threatens everyone's rights.
• 
  April

  An account of the Japanese Internment. This is written very well. I absolutely love her attitude as her family suffers all sorts of atrocities due to their Japanese heritage. I think this is a very important story to read so we can understand what America truly is and what it means to us. Also, what can happen when we group and begin to judge people based on their ethnicity and/or their appearance. A real eye opener.
  For me, this is a subject that was only briefly touched on in high school history class. Yet, it is something that greatly impacted many of our fellow Americans and will continue to impact them and their descendants.
  
• 
  Elisse

  I liked this book quite a bit. I have studied the Japanese internment camp that was in Delta Utah for the past few semesters in different history classes, and this book finally made it real for me. I was outraged at the treatment of these US citizens, and awed by the fortitude and perserverence of Yo and her family. Everyone should read this book, so that this horrible and embarrassing event in American history is not repeated.
• 
  Stuart

  An eye-opening piece of American history we were never taught in school. Our own country imprisoned thousands of its own citizens and locked them away in camps, depriving them of their homes and livelihood during WWII. Japanese men, women and children were deemed a threat to national security and imprisoned in camps away from the West Coast. Some things should never be forgotten and never glossed over if we want to truly understand our history and the type of people we aspire to be.
• 
  Selena

  In the same setting as
  Citizen 13660
• 
  Margaret

  I loved this book. The narrative was open and honest, although often with a positive slant, which I felt reflected the author herself. I could relate to their family unit of a mother, father and two daughters and I felt like if I had lived in that neighborhood during that time as a child, She would have been a friend. This book really made me feel for this family as well as all the Japanese-Americans interned during WWII.
• 
  Garret Rose

  Surprisingly optimistic viewpoint about an atrocious historical event. It is crazy that this happened 60 miles away from where I live.
• 
  Nanako Water

  Published in 1982, this small book (150 pages) is a memoir written by Yoshiko Uchida who was young woman when she and her parents and grandparents were forced out of their home in Berkeley, CA.
  
  Excerpt from the introduction: ...The context in which Uchida wrote "Desert Exile" was markedly different from that in which, for instance, Monica Sone wrote "Nisei Daughter" (1953), another well-known autobiographical account of a Nikkei family's forced removal and imprisonment during World War II. While the two texts share some similarities in terms of approach and narrative strategy, Uchida's text is more explicitly political and pointed in its purpose.
  
  Both of these women wrote about their wartime experiences with sensitivity and warmth. While that tone might be mistaken for an acceptance of what happened to their families, the reader must be reminded of the horror. In 1942 American leadership failed to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And the indifference of good people allowed this travesty to take place. This is the lesson we must learn. If it was so easy for one group of American citizens to be incarcerated, to be forced from homes and jobs - all in the name of national emergency - then it will be just as easy for this to happen again. Now that we're living in another national emergency, it shouldn't be hard for us to imagine our rights and our lives as American citizens, be demolished by careless political leaders and unethical social media. That is if we do not remain vigilant.
• 
  Fei Mei

  Desert Exile is the story of the experiences the author and her family in concentration camps in the US during WWII. It's a very interesting story as a lot of people are not aware that such camps existed. I enjoyed the chapter about life before the war. It did a good job of giving what happens later context. It's hard to imagine there was so much racism against Asians on the West Coast as there seems to be such a high population of Asians in that area of the country. It goes to show us that racism is everywhere.
  
  It is interesting all the ways the Japanese Americans tried to make their living quarters into a home and how creative they were in finding little luxuries to make life bearable. The family goes through losing everything, relocating, and trying to make a decent life under very difficult circumstances. Their perseverance is very inspiring and their reliance on each other shows the importance of family and community.
  
  I would have liked for the book to share more about what happened after the war and the release from the camp.
  
  Overall, the book is very enjoyable and informative.
• 
  Kylee Ehmann

  Yoshiko Uchida provides a beautifully written first-hand account of what it was like for the U.S. government to forcefully remove her and her family to concentration camps. She and her family ended up in Topaz, Utah, where they faced absolutely terrible conditions for the first year they lived there. Uchida ends her narrative not with the end of the war, but the end of her "Desert Exile" after she and her sister are able to return to the outside world in order to pursue higher education (though her parents still remained behind). She touches on the ongoing discrimination she faced afterwards, but these are obviously very much an afterthought. Her first and foremost trauma was the forced relocation and the terrible conditions of the camp. It's a shame that the United States public still doesn't really remember or honor these victims of the war, or seem to care to commemorate their suffering. There are a lot of really good accounts about the political reasons the concentration camps happened and some really good research, but I strongly recommend everyone read this book to understand the daily injustices of the camps at the interpersonal level.
• 
  Darcy

  Yoshiko Uchida tells her story with grace, clarity, and composure. She does not take to flights of fancy in order to make her memoir more interesting or exciting; indeed, it doesn’t really need embellishment, as the simple truth of her family’s exile and internment at Tanforan and then Topaz is haunting enough. What I found most moving were the excerpts of poetry that her mother wrote, particularly this one:
  
  Someone named it
  Topaz. . . .
  This land
  Where neither grass
  Nor trees
  Nor wild flowers grow.
  
  Banished to this
  Desert land,
  I cherish the
  Blessing of the sky.
  
  The fury of the
  Dust storm spent,
  I gaze through tears
  At the sunset glow.
  
  Grown old so soon
  In a foreign land,
  What do they think,
  These people
  Eating in lonely silence?
  
  The story of how Japanese Americans were cruelly uprooted from their homes after the attack on Pearl Harbor and sent to concentration camps within their own country, a country for which many sacrificed their lives, is a story that needs to be remembered. I am glad that memoirs such as this exist.
  
• 
  Jenna

  I thought that this book was super captivating. As a young Japanese American, I am trying to understand what my family, as well as, other Japanese American families went through during WWII.
  
  Also, as an educator, I want to find supplemental material for the novels that I teach and this would definitely be a piece of literature that I recommend for my students to read alongside Farewell to Manzanar . Even though they are interned at different camps, I think that this will provide more perspective on the treatment of the internees.
  
  My only criticism is that her story jumps at times. It's almost as though you are hearing her think as she writes and sometimes she goes off on a tangent. But other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
• 
  Elisabeth White

  This was a required text for me in my history class this past semester. It was my least favorite of the 3 books we read throughout the semester. The narrative follows a young Japanese-American family and their experience during America's involvement in WWII. It follows the family as they make sense of a new world where they experience a cultural shift of racism and prejudice towards them after Pearl Harbor. I felt that there were many spots where a lot of unnecessary information was given than needed to make the point which led to the text feeling very slow and boring at times. Regardless, this was a great short nonfiction read full of lessons for our culture and informative eye-opening information.
• 
  Isaac Timm

  A history of a family taken brutally from their home by their own country, in direct violation of the US Constitution. Imprisoned by racism, greed and fear, and must importantly by their fellow citizens. But it not a story about bitterness and anger, its a story of hope and defiance. That the power of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the belief that all men are created equal is just more powerful then petty and cruel policy makers. The Politicians that uses "Family Values" and "Patriotism" as a catch phases while they teach hate, intolerance, and injustice, should read this book and find what those two ideas really mean.
• 
  Karen Shimamoto

  The Uchida family gave me a new perspective of life for issei and nisei from a more wealthy background. Mr Uchida was a businessman with Mitsui, a Japanese company, had connections to Doshisha Christian University, was educated, and had many links to both white and Japanese people with influence and connections. Their hardships were not any less than the other 110,000 JAs who were forced into American concentration camps, but their ability to make use of their education, knowledge, and social training was very interesting and informative. I really enjoyed reading about the Uchida family and seeing this story through some different lens. Very inspiring.
• 
  Amanda

  This was a beautiful read. I think as Americans we are ashamed enough of this chapter of our history that we are often tempted to sweep it under the rug, rather than air it out and talk about it. I'm so glad the author wrote this beautiful memoir; she is kind and forgiving, without trying to cover up the realities of the travesty acted upon her and her family, and I think her tone makes it easier to address such a sad and shameful topic. If it were up to me, this would become a "must-read" for all high school students. I found delving into Uchida's perspective very enlightening and uplifting, and I especially loved her inclusion of her mother's poetry at each chapter end.
• 
  Linda

  While a memoir, this important book documenting the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII comes across more factual than as a personal narrative. The Tanforan racetrack and Topaz center were some of the most miserable, badly built "camps" which heightens the sense of outrage at the internment of innocent people. The story really highlights the "gaman," or patient fortitude, the JA people exhibited while their basic rights were trampled and their savings and livelihoods stolen. Photos add to the history, while a sprinkling of poems by the authors mother add a bittersweet personal touch.
• 
  Phoebe

  A companion to Uchida's wonderful middle grade novel, this is for older readers and is an actual accounting of the experiences that the author and her family had during the 1940s. Familiar scenes show how closely Uchida drew on her personal experiences to write Journey to Topaz. The clear, thoughtful writing style is perfect for teen readers. As a first-person accounting of the Japanese American internment, this book is probably at the top and should be a first choice for anyone.
  Junior high-high school-adult.
• 
  Deepa

  Do not judge a book by its cover is very apt for this book. An extremely simple reading, but you can almost feel the pain, confusion, helplessness when the writer talks about her experience. It talks about perseverance and courage of an entire generation of Japanese-Americans, who when humiliated and were betrayed by the very same government they believed and trusted in, never lost hope. It was there hope and amicable trust in america that saw them through the hurdles they faced. Hats off to the writer and her family for showing so much courage in the face of adversity.
• 
  Emily

  I read this book when I was in college for an Immigration History class. I really enjoyed this book because it helped me to better understand the effect that the bombing of Pearl Harbor had on the nation. I think it is important to look at the good things our government has done as well as the questionable things. This book gives you a new perspective on life and the struggles that some individuals were forced to endure.