Yoshiko Uchida was born on November 24, 1921, in Alameda, California, and grew up in Berkeley with her father, Dwight Takashi Uchida, a businessman, and her mother, Iku Uchida. As a little girl, Yoshiko liked to draw, and by age ten she was writing short stories. During her summers, she would travel, once going to Japan when she was about twelve years old.

In 1942 Uchida graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, but her diploma arrived through the mail because by then she— like many other Japanese-Americans— had been evacuated from her home to the Tanforan Race Track. From the race track, she was moved to the Topaz, Utah, internment camp. She and others of Japanese ancestry who lived on the U.S. West Coast were taken from their homes and sent to inland camps after war with Japan broke out. Most...