Desert Exile

The book’s final chapter traces life from the fall of 1942 through May 1943, when Uchida leaves Topaz for summer in New York City, followed by a fully-funded fellowship at Smith College. Some internees’ spirits dampen during these months. Instances of crime, and late-night assault to Nisei leaders occur. A stink bomb thrown in the Uchidas’ home after the daughters leave prompts Topaz administration to secure departure for Mr. and Mrs. Uchida.

As October brings cold weather, outside friends send gifts to those at Topaz. Uchida’s mother receives letters from her old college teacher, who sends “an heirloom silver teaspoon that once belonged to her grandmother” (124). The teacher also sends flowers, as this symbol of hope used throughout Desert Exile returns. Dust storms close schools in November, until the Army winterizes the barracks. Winter turns life in the already barren camp bleaker.

Uchida receives permission to take students outside the gates of Topaz to visit a sheepherder, as “most important, the children had some sense of purpose” (126) in going to school. The internees celebrate a first Thanksgiving inside, a meal with symbolic resonance alluding to the decimation of American Indians by the U.S. government. Mr. and Mrs. Uchida celebrate their twenty-sixth wedding anniversary, for which Uchida and Keiko prepare a scrapbook “with photos cut from magazines” (127) of presents the sisters wished to give.

As Christmas approaches, schools reopen. Visitors from outside assist older students who want to leave for college. The National Japanese American Student Relocation Council eventually assists some three thousand students. Earlier, in October, aliens who met certain qualifications were also permitted to leave. Uchida stays, believing it her duty to help her parents and community. Christmas season “gave some small sense of dignity to the demeaned lives they now led” (130). On Christmas Eve, carolers from the church sing at barracks.

Winter continues, and Uchida’s parents visit her grandmother in Wyoming. Encouraged by their parents, Uchida and Keiko apply for school outside the camp. In January, the U.S. Secretary of War announces the Army wants to build an all-Nisei unit, for the first time accepting Japanese-American recruits. This spawns Question 28, asking recruits to swear loyalty to the U.S. and forswear loyalty to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign entity. The American-born Nisei never claimed allegiance to Japan. Men who answer no, and to the similar Question 27, are named the “no-no” boys. 

Here, Uchida summarizes legal reparations and other government statements made to acknowledge and begin to heal those impacted by internment during World War II. She praises the social consciousness of civil-rights-era protestors. Uchida also recounts the courage and stoic spirit Issei demonstrated while interned, chronicling how the Uchidas’ lives continue following incarceration. Keiko becomes a Yale mathematics professor, and Uchida publishes more than thirty books. She states she wrote this book not just for Japanese-Americans seeking continuity with their past, but for “all Americans, with the hope that through knowledge of the past, they will never allow another group of people in America to be sent into desert exile ever again” (156).

In 1976, President Ford signs Executive Order 9066, which in part said “‘not only was that evacuation wrong, but Japanese Americans were and are loyal Americans’” (147). The proclamation resolves such injustice “‘shall never again be repeated’” (147). In 1981, President Carter and Congress conduct a series of hearings to record testimony of hundreds of those interned.

In theEpilogue, Uchida says she finds no fault with Sansei children, who “experienced the Vietnam War with its violent confrontations and protest” (148) and asked their Nisei parents: “‘Why did you let it happen?’ They were right to ask questions […] They are the generation for whom civil rights meant more than just words. They are the generation who taught us to celebrate our ethnicity and discover our ethnic pride” (148).

Here, we see the narrative arc of Uchida’s Japanese-American identity come full circle. As Uchida was once a proud child then university student in Berkeley, after a two-year Ford Foundation fellowship in Japan, Uchida “came home aware of a new dimension to myself as a Japanese American and with new respect and admiration for the culture that made my parents what they were” (154).

Uchida eventually moves to New York, where her father works in a factory painting flowers on glassware:

My father had lost virtually all of his retirement benefits at the now defunct Mitsui and Company, but he had not lost his spirit or vitality. He was determined and eager to begin a new life, and my mother, although her health was deteriorating, was ready to begin with him (151).

Mr. and Mrs. Uchida eventually move back to California and live in the back house at their old Japanese church in Oakland.“Perhaps I survived the uprooting and incarceration,” Uchida writes, “because my Issei parents taught me to endure” (150).