Yoshiko Uchida

In the following essay, Yoshiko Uchida, a resident of Berkeley, California at the outbreak of World War II, writes of her family's experience in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Upon her return home from the school library that day, Uchida discovered that FBI agents had taken her father, along with virtually every leader of the Japanese community, into custody. Six days would pass before Uchida's family received word from her father. He had been taken to the Immigration Detention Quarters in San Francisco, and was soon to be transferred to a camp for enemy aliens in Missoula, Montana. Uchida writes of her family's struggle to conduct business affairs in the absence of her father, who was only allowed to communicate with his wife and daughters through censored letters. The following...