Picture Bride With Related Readings

by Yoshiko Uchida

High or Middle-School reader with literature selections based on theme of Japanese/Asian experience in America

210 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are always so heartbreaking. This book has truly a wide range of emotions. It’s a story of immigration, adaptation to a new lifestyle, arrangement marriages, racism, and the consequences of war on innocent people. It truly has it all as stories of Japanese Americans tend to be around WWII.
In the book we follow Hana, a Japanese woman that agrees to marry a complete stranger because her family thinks he is a good match and they are trying to find him a proper Japanese wife. So she ends up travelling to America to marry Taro, and she mostly lives within the Japanese community, she doesn’t really speak a lot of English, she can get through her tasks but she does have trouble expressing deeper emotions. And she also has a little trouble adapting to life in America. There’s little moments throughout the story where we see her falling into her Japanese behaviours because it’s normal to her, and then we see her daughter completely ashamed or embarrassed because she just can’t stop bowing to others constantly, or talking in Japanese. The gap between mother and daughter is really big, and it creates frictions within the family dynamics.
And then as the story progresses we know the war is going on and we eventually get to the Pearl Harbor event, which then leads us to the concentrations camps. And even though I’ve been seeing stories like this a little more often, it’s still a part of American history that not a lot of people talk about. It’s still a shock to know this happened. Hana’s story is heartbreaking at times. But seeing her strength and her courage to not give up no matter what, is just amazing. I loved her character.
This book also comes with some complementary readings, a few memories, short stories or even poems that one way or the other related to the different subjects in the book. There’s poems written by nissei people and how they remember their parents going through the whole camp internment problem. There’s stories of immigrants from other countries trying to adapt to America, and I think my favourite of these was ‘Clothes’ by Chitta Banerjee Divakaruni, I love her so much, her writing is always so beautiful and her stories are always so powerful. Her story almost made me cry.

[Jeanette Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel took me through a wide range of emotions. It is am emotional story of a couple's/ a culture's struggle for survival and acceptance.

[Dat Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Picture Bride, it discovers a big historical, cultural event in the history of Japan. In the early 20th century, despite the victory of Japan in WWI, militarization causes lots of poverty in the country. And the solution, for some families that had daughters, was to send them to Japanese men in the United States, who had settled down there for some years, and had a stable job to live, and make the daughters their wives. The families believe that their daughters would have much better lives in a more advanced country. And the men and the women only know each other's appearance through photos, some might be very old, which explains the name "Picture Bride". The story is about the first 4 decades of the main character, Hana, from when she shyly stepped off the boat, and first feel the American soil, to the sad moments as they have to move away from her houses, to temporary Japanese camps during WWII. She had gone through a lot of dramatic moments in her life in America. She was overwhelmed by the culture there, and had to adjust to how American back then don't treat Asians as well, or they pretended that she invisible. But she met some more Japanese there, and eventually, and finally, settled down, with everything seems to be in place. She had also learned more about the culture, as she gave birth and raised her only child, Mary, in America.

So, in overall, this book, Picture Bride gives an in-depth look of the lives of Asian-Americans in the early 20th century, when lots of discrimination was going on, and also, how the Japanese-Americans, specifically, struggle in their lives as they live through the time of war, when Japanese was one of the biggest enemies of America

[Artchalar Syluangkhot · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book! I enjoy reading this novel and it was one of my favorite books. My thought of this book was sad and interesting. On the first I thought it going to boring, so I give a try to read this book, until when I got into the middle, I just want to read more and I actually finish it. The part that interest me was when Hana moved to United State to see her future husband (Taro), even though she never see him before!! My thought was like thats weird and crazy, she never see him and dont know how he look like or the attitude, and how they going to like stay together? It would be awkward when they met each others for the first times then, I'm wondering. Then the story goes on about their life after then, it was interesting when they got married and how their life goes on. Their marriage life wasnt that great either, so it was pretty sad. I felt really bad for them because they were poor and how people being racist to them. What did they do wrong? People are being mean and rude to them. Overall, this book are great! and really get me into reading it.

[Jem · Rating 5 out of 5]

The main character, Hana is a headstrong independent girl from Japan who ventures to America as one of many picture brides. Though her husband is not as she had hoped he would be, the two of them endure years of life together filled with grief, pain, love and laughter. Friends surround and Hana comes to love life in Oakland, CA. She has three miscarriages but has a daughter, Mary, but she too causes grief to Mary. The couple are thrown into the troubles of WWII and Hana and her husband, Taro, endure. It's a very enriching tale of the dignity and the honor of the Japanese during the war. World War II did much too and even America had its mistakes. The Japanese had great endurance of their treatment and its a wonderful story full of the experiences of life and what you may endure.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mail order bride in San Francisco and then Japanese Internment Camps. Interesting but didn't drive me forward.

[Waffle...♥ · Rating 3 out of 5]

For Eng1H.

[Kathy Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love this bool after reading it in my Language Art's Class last year!!

[Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This appears to be very historically accurate. It doesn't really have and end, I'd like to know what happened to Hanna and her friend.