Yoshiko Uchida Books

Image retrieved October 6, 2007, from http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2005/03/images/uchida.jpg.

The Invinsible Thread

I chose this book because I used to teach Farewell to Manzanar, another true story about the Japanese internment camps set up in the U.S. shortly after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. Like Farewell to Manzanar, from the moment I started reading The Invisible Thread, I was hooked.
Uchida does a wonderful job capturing the trials and tribulations of her youth growing up in California during the 30's. She describes the embarassment and shame she feels because of her Japanese heritage. While she feels completely American, she knows that she will always be looked upon as a foreigner because of her slanted eyes, yellow complexion, and black hair. She is even embarassed by her parents for the Japanese customs (bowing, eating at a picnic with chopsticks, etc.) they practice in public.
However, Uchida does a wonderful job of capturing the essence of her parents' gentle and giving spirits, even in the most dire of situations -- being uprooted from their perfect lives in sunny California and being placed in internment camps, where they became prisoners. Initially, her father was sent away to one camp while the Uchida ladies were sent to another one. At this camp, the Uchida family was forced to live in a horse stall at a race track, a tough but bearable situation because eventually the family reunites there. Then, they were sent to live at a camp in a desert in Utah. Conditions were so physically unbearable that the Uchida parents begged their grown American-born daughters to look for jobs and leave them behind since they were born in Japan. Eventually the daughters do so. Although Uchida is angry at her country's betrayal and infringement upon their civil rights, Uchida uses the quiet strength learned from her parents to overcome the prejudice and hatred heaped on her by her own country.
As a minority who grew up in predominantly white rural town, I could relate to Uchida's self-hatred. I hated my dark skin and black hair. Even when I was told I looked "exotic," I wanted to be Barbie-blonde and white. After all, exotic to me meant different from the norm. Not until now have I read a children's book that captured the feelings of my youth. I would have loved to have read this when I was younger. However, at the same time, I wonder if it would have been impactful.