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Summary Of Yoshiko Uchida's Desert Exile

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Following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, racial tensions increased in the United States, especially on the West Coast (Divine 898). The anti-Japanese sentiment led to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which gave military officials the power to limit the civil rights of Japanese Americans (Danzer 802). The order also authorized the forced relocation of all Japanese Americans to concentration camps (Divine 898). These camps were located in desolate deserts and flatlands in the interior of the United States (Sato 67). Two thirds of the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were forced to relocate were “Nisei”, or native born American citizens (Divine 898).
Among this group of “Nisei” was the Uchida family from Berkeley, California. Yoshiko Uchida, the youngest daughter in the Uchida family was a senior at the University of California at Berkeley at the time of the attacks. Years later, Yoshiko became a prolific writer of children’s books (Sato 66). In her book, “Desert Exile”, published in 1982, Uchida gave a personal account of the evacuation and incarceration of her family during World War II (Sato 66). Uchida’s book raises awareness to the specter of racial prejudice and the hope that no other group of Americans would have to endure this type of injustice and violation of their human rights (Sato 66). …show more content…

The “Exclusion Order Number Nineteen” effectively uprooted 1,319 Japanese to the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno (Uchida 55). They had to report by May 1, 1942, which gave them 10 days to pack their life’s belongings and prepare for evacuation. Even though Yoshiko’s family knew the evacuation was coming, they were frantic. Their father had been arrested during the FBI “roundup” of aliens of Japanese ancestry, which forced Yoshiko’s older sister to take on the role as head of the family (Sato

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