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The Invisible Thread: An Autobiography
Yoshiko Uchida
3.87
511 ratings67 reviews
Growing up in California, Yoshi knew her family looked different from their neighbors. Still, she felt like an American. But everything changed when America went to war against Japan. Along with all the other Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, Yoshi's family were rounded up and imprisoned in a crowded. badly built camp in the desert because they "looked like the enemy." Yoshiko Uchida grew up to be an award-winning author. This memoir of her childhood gives a personal account of a shameful episode in American history.
GenresNonfictionMemoirHistoryBiographyAutobiographyHistoricalBook Club
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136 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
Original title
The Invisible Thread: An Autobiography
This edition
Format
136 pages, Paperback
Published
September 1, 1995 by Beech Tree Books
ISBN
9780688137038 (ISBN10: 0688137032)
ASIN
0688137032
Language
English
More editions
HardcoverSimon & Schuster Children's Publishing1991
PaperbackSilver Burdett Ginn Religion1992
HardcoverSimon & Schuster Children's Publishing1991
PaperbackBeech Tree Books1995
PaperbackSilver Burdett Ginn1987
PaperbackPerfection Learning Prebound1995
Library BindingBt Bound1995
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About the author
Yoshiko Uchida51 books94 followers
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Yoshiko, born on November 24, 1921, was the second daughter of Japanese immigrant parents Takashi and Iku. Her father worked as a businessman for Mitsui and Company in San Francisco, and Iku wrote poetry, passing along her love of literature to her girls. Though the Great Depression raged, the Uchida family enjoyed comforts because of Takashi's well-paying job and their own frugality. Yoshiko loved to write, and her stories played out on pieces of brown wrapping paper. She also kept a journal to record her thoughts and events.
Enveloped in love and tradition at home, Yoshiko weathered the prejudice she sometimes faced. Many white students at University High School in Oakland didn't invite her to their parties and wouldn't socialize with her, deeming her a foreigner. Even while attending the University of California at Berkley, Yoshiko often faced the same dilemma of being ostracized. She found friendships with other Japanese American students and was preparing to graduate when Pearl Harbor was bombed, changing her life.
The United States government rounded up 120,000 people of Japanese descent and put them into camps. The Uchida family first resided in a horse stall at a racetrack in California, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. Though difficult to endure, the next move was worse. Almost 8,000 Japanese were sent to a relocation concentration camp called Topaz in the Utah desert. The detainees suffered from violent dust storms, scorpions, snakes, and exceedingly poor living conditions. Yoshiko taught second grade children there until she received a fellowship from Smith College to earn a master's degree in education.
Yoshiko and her sister both left the camp in May of 1943, with their parents gaining release later that year. Teaching for several years in a Quaker school outside of Philadelphia, Yoshiko decided to quit teaching and find work that allowed more time for writing. She moved to New York City and began as a secretary, penning stories in the evenings. Asked to contribute to a book about Japanese folk tales, Yoshiko discovered that though the book didn't come to be, with time she could create a full collection of folk tales. Writing a few pieces for adults, Yoshiko realized she was better suited for children's books.
A Ford Foundation fellowship sent her to Japan to research the culture and their stories. Spending two years, Yoshiko found her time to be healing as she learned about her own ancestry. The pain of the concentration camps lessened, and she began writing about the experiences in fictional books such as Journey to Topaz and Journey Home. Her career as an author soared as people regarded her as a pioneer in Japanese American children's literature. The author of almost forty works, including Japanese folk tales and stories of Japanese American children making their way in the world, Yoshiko traveled extensively, lectured, and wrote. After suffering from a stroke, Yoshiko passed away on June 25, 1992, in Berkeley, California.
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3.87
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 67 reviews
Jay Schutt
311 reviews131 followers
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October 25, 2018
A well-written and simply stated memoir of a young Japanese-American woman's life experience before and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She had all the hopes and dreams that any American girl would have had only to have them snatched away. Even her freedom. She was five months away from getting her degree in education from the University of California when she was separated from her father and sent with her mother and sister to the first of two internment camps. Her spirit, strength and perseverance overcame the hurt and prejudice implied by the American government to obtain release from the camp to go east and earn her master's degree and get the respect and life that she should have had all along. An eye-opening read.
memoir
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Janet
184 reviews
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February 25, 2017
Just a fabulous book about the Japanese American experience before and during WWII. Highly recommend it as a read aloud book with a preteen In order to discuss it. Also love that my great grandparents, the Okubos, were mentioned. I remember meeting the author when I was a young adult and being awed by her grace.
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Mehreen
468 reviews16 followers
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October 26, 2017
I picked up this book by accident while looking for AN invisible thread, but I'm glad I did! Even though it's a children's book, it took me a surprisingly long time to get through it. The beginning was pretty mundane and almost annoying as you read about a typical American childhood in California in the 20s...but once you got 1941, it completely changed. Reading a first hand account of an American born child learning to exist in a concentration camp simply for being Japanese is heartbreaking. The fact that the government could believe that an entire ethnicity could share a consciousness and deserved to be punished for it is incomprehensible. To go even further and to ask those prisoners to fight for the country that enslaved them is even more reprehensible.
I was surprised to learn how much of a community they were able to create in abominable conditions, the attempt to keep school and recreation going amidst all the craziness is commendable. And I had no idea Asians were denied the opportunity to become citizens back then, it really opens your eyes to the xenophobia that has always existed here. The most illuminating thing, however, is how long it took us to realize we were wrong. Too late for Yoshiko's parents to benefit from the apology and reparations, but not too late for us to ensure something like this never happens to anyone again. It's an important read for anyone who unequivocally thinks America is infallibly great. Our greatness comes from learning from our mistakes, not repeating them. Perhaps a book Drumpf should read...or have Melania read to him.
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Debbe
177 reviews
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December 3, 2018
I originally read this book as a young adult, the author and my grandparents knew each other. My great-grandparents were the Okubos whom the author’s family’s visited in Livingston before the war. My grandmother was always so proud that Yoshiko Uchida wrote books about the experience of being US citizens and placed into concentration camps within their own country. Like the author, my grandparents also ‘made the best of it’ and organized activities, schools, did bookkeeping, cooked in the mess hall. I still just can’t imagine keeping such a good outlook during such a horrible and unjust experience. I appreciate that those that lost so much during this horrible time in our history are speaking out as we all know this could still happen again today in our country.
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Erin Bottger (Bouma)
137 reviews22 followers
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August 9, 2018
This book, as the title suggests, is about realizing and celebrating one's second-generation immigrant experience. In Yoshiko's case, growing up in the Bay Area of California as a normal American girl pre-WWII, and, in time, connecting to and valuing her Japanese heritage. I found it interesting, especially the supportive communities that help families and individuals survive and thrive.
Her parents, born in Japan, came to America through their attendance at Doshisha University in Japan, and the Uchida family is active in the Japanese Christian community in California, with lots of visiting Japanese students guests at family meals. Takashi and Iku, a businessman and housewife, try to keep many Japanese traditions and speaking the language alive for Yoshiko and her older sister Keiko (Kay). The family makes two trips back to Japan in her early years but she is still focused on being an American and misses much. The family, back in Berkeley, has warm relations with their European immigrant neighbors and the Americans around them.
Of course, the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor disrupts this quiet simple life. The family and their "Nisei" (first-generation immigrant) friends can't believe it's true. First, the father is abruptly arrested and sent to Montana. After an anxious period, Yoshiko, her sister and mother must pack up their home and prepare for transport off the West Coast.
The last half of the book chronicles the internment camp experience. First they are transported by rail to the Tanforan Racetrack, where their family is assigned an old horse stall home. Before long, the father rejoins them and both girls become teachers of children in makeshift schools. Still, they are prisoners without civil rights, isolated from the rest of American life, and eat rationed food in the mess hall. This life becomes almost bearable, but they are uprooted once more and sent to Topaz, Utah, a dusty desert with inadequate water, barren barracks, extreme weather and dust storms. Again, the two sisters begin teaching and the father takes leadership in the community.
It is now early spring of 1943, and The internees are growing restless and some are turning violent and threatening. Young men are being recruited to fight in the U.S. Army and, to clear the camp and defuse the situation, others are given the option to leave if they can find situations through the National Japanese Student Relocation Council. First Kay gets a job offer in May at Mt. Holyoke College Dept of Education's Nursery School in Massachusetts, then Yoshiko is offered a full graduate fellowship at Education Dept. of Smith College. Though they hate to leave their parents, they are eager to escape the unnatural confinement of the camp.
Yoshi graduates Smith in May 1944 with a master's degree, and her parents are able to move to Salt Lake City. She was offered a teaching job in Frankford outside of Philadelphia and her sister joined her for the summer. At last, they were able to rent a larger place and send for their parents and the family is reunited once more.
I bought this book to use with a Japanese 19-year-old woman who is strengthening her English with me. We will study chapters and discuss them. It is not very difficult reading.
autobiography-biography
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Connie D
1,614 reviews54 followers
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October 30, 2016
This is the biography of a Japanese-American author who grew up in Berkeley in the 1920s-30s and then went to internment camps in the 1940s. She describes her family, friends, and life in loving detail; I especially enjoyed the parts about (and pictures of) her early writing and dogs. Her reflections as a person between cultures are poignant, as are her day-to-day experiences while in camps.
Uchida was a children's author and this is categorized as a children's biography, but it's appropriate for all ages.
biography children-s-lit japanese-american-experience
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Diane
322 reviews10 followers
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June 8, 2017
A true story of a Japanese American family and their interment in a Nevada concentration camp. A part of our history that we should all be aware of.
era-ww2 locale-usa memoir-biography
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James Crawford
6,149 reviews39 followers
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January 23, 2016
Yoshi is a Japanese American young girl. She has an older sister, Keiko, a mother and a father. She grew up in Berkeley, California, her father working at an import-export firm.
At the age of 12 she visited Japan, but felt somewhat foreign in that country, just as she feels foreign in the U.S. She gets along well with the neighbor's children, and the neighbors and their parents get along fine.
She goes from junior to senior high, graduating from high school early and going on to the University of California.
The above part takes up a little less than half of the book. The rest deals with Pearl Harbor and afterwards. One day Yoshi goes to study at the library, comes home, and finds her father has been taken by the FBI, and there's an FBI agent in the home. Her father was taken since he was a businessmen.
(One thing to keep in mind; these people were not charged with any crime at all. There was no formal arrest, no trial, no due process, no nothing like that at all involved. The people were simply taken and put places.)
Yoshi goes into how the interment process affected her and her family. They were housed in a former horse stall at the assembly center, and then were shipped to Tanforan.
She then talks about the life in the camp, how schools were set up, etc. Then they are sent to Topaz.
(She uses the term “concentration camps.”)
She also talks about the shooting that killed an internee. She then talks about worsening conditions in the camp that led to internal violence at the camp, which became a hotbed of angry young men, basically.
Then she covers the issue of getting volunteers for the military.
She finally gets to leave the camp when she gets a job outside it.
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Jessica
122 reviews6 followers
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May 21, 2011
This book was interesting, though after reading it, I'm not sure I'm interesting in looking into reading any of Yoshiko Uchida's fiction. She has sort of a distant, impersonal way of writing that made it hard to get into her story, even though it was fascinating. And as terrible as this sounds, her autobiography gets much more interesting when she relates her experiences living in internment camps. This is mainly because, in true memoir fashion, the first half of the book is very fragmented and non-linear. But something about the way she writes her story, maybe the fact that she doesn't record her emotions or how she feels/thinks about things turned me off. Which is weird because her story is about one of the most traumatic things that has happened in American history. But it's almost like she was afraid to write how she really felt about the injustice and terribleness of everything that happened, instead recording all of the positive things she experienced in internment camp. But it is definitely a very interesting read and I learned a lot about this period of history that I hadn't known before. I'd definitely suggest this to young adults because it gets you interested in learning about history through the eyes of someone who was there.
Warnings (on a scale of 1-5):
Violence: 1 The author records some of the violent, unfair, and unjust actions that were done to the Japanese Americans, including one instand of an old man being shot in cold blood by one of the internment camp guards, but she doesn't go into any detail.
young-adult-books
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From other countries
Kailua Gypsy
5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read
Reviewed in the United States on 2 January 2013
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This book and others like it should be assigned to our school children to show what life was like during a different, less multi-cultural, era in our American past. The shameful incarceration of Japanese Americans during WW2 should never have happened and must never be repeated. This book shows that life and period in detail, as seen through a young girl's eyes.
5 people found this helpful
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N ode
3.0 out of 5 stars The story
Reviewed in the United States on 30 March 2024
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This was a simplistic book for young readers. Mission accomplished. The book was used but reportedly in “good condition.” It was not as the binding was broken and page sections were falling out.
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Tim Guilliams
5.0 out of 5 stars Good Service
Reviewed in the United States on 6 April 2012
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I purchased a book for my sons school work. He had to write a review on this book, and we could not find it locally. We purchased it through Amazon and it arrived in about a week. It was used, but in great condition and worked well for his report. We are very pleased with our experience.
One person found this helpful
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Sheri E. Teeter
4.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
Reviewed in the United States on 10 November 2013
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
It shouldn't be out of print. This book tells a story about the history of our country and how we reacted to the Japanese when they invaded Pearl Harbor.
3 people found this helpful
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George H.
1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing.
Reviewed in the United States on 30 November 2020
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Suggested it for a book club based on a friend’s recommendation. It was not what I expected.
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Ibuyabunchofstuff
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful value
Reviewed in the United States on 11 January 2013
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This was a Great book, and a wonderful value. My daughter enjoyed it so much she read it in one day!
One person found this helpful
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Alice Malone
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on 13 March 2015
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Informative, warm read. Left wanting to hear more.
3 people found this helpful
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marcella corby
3.0 out of 5 stars overpriced
Reviewed in the United States on 19 January 2014
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
I returned the book because the price on this small used book was outrageously high, more than 4 times it's value on the used book market. I was shocked but Amazon let me send it back and gave me most of what I paid for it. Apparently, it was not a Prime item so I had to pay for shipping.
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