Journey Home - a book by Yoshiko Uchida

Journey Home by Yoshiko Uchida is a sequel to the book Journey to Topaz, which concentrated on Yuki (a young girl and main character of the stories) and her family being sent to a Japanese interment camp during World War II. Journey Home is the story of the family being released from Topaz, only to discover that much has changed since being in the camp. For awhile, Yuki and her family cannot return home to Berkeley, California because it has been forbidden for Japanese families to live in California.

After dealing with that adjustment, the family must also worry about their son Ken, who is a Japanese-American fighting in World War II for the Americans. Soon, the ban of Japanese from the West Coast is lifted, and Yuki and her family may return to the place they love, but they find that all the Japanese families must completely start over. Where once there were successful shops and vibrant Japanese churches lie neglected and run down buildings. Yuki's family helps her best friend and grandmother come back to California from Topaz, and with another man, help each other start a new life. It is very different from the life Yuki once knew, but she begins to embrace it as her own and begin to feel at home again.

This book was a very powerful tale about the treatment of the Japanese-Americans by the American government during World War II. The author, Yoshiko Uchida, based some of this book on her own family's struggles during this time. Uchida was born in California in 1922, and was a Japanese-American. During her senior year at the University of Berkeley, she was sent to one of the Japanese interment camps that popped up in the United States during World War II.

Uchida began writing about the Americn injustices and how Japanese-Americans were treated duing this time. She created literature for Asian-American children where there was none. She died in 1992.

Other titles by Yoshiko Uchida include:

• Journey to Topaz (prequel to Journey Home)
• A Jar of Dreams
• Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family
• The Bracelet
• Pricture Bride
• The Best Bad Thing
• Samurai of Gold Hill

Sources:

Uchida, Y. (1978). Journey home. New York: Antheneum.

www.barnesandnoble.com Image retrieved on 4-1-08.

www.clarion.edu/edu-humm/libsci/buchanancoursesyl/uchida2.htm Information retrieved on 4-1-08.