Desert Exile

Chapter 2 presents the fusion of two cultures, bringing us closer to life in Berkeley. By the end of the chapter, as Uchida recounts getting older, she remembers feeling shame towards the foreignness of the Issei. By the time Uchida is a university student at Berkeley, she and other Nisei “were in, effect, rejected as inferior Americans by our own country and rejected as inferior by the country of our parents as well. We were neither totallyAmerican nor totally Japanese, but a unique fusion of the two” (45).

Uchida shares traditional Japanese behaviors she and Keiko followed with their mother. They speak Japanese at home to keep traditions alive, like before each meal saying, “‘Itadaki masu’ (a gracious acknowledgement to a hostess or whoever prepared the meal)” (28). Uchida’s mother and father receive Japanese magazines, read two Japanese newspapers a day, and at the same time receive the San Francisco Chronicle, National Geographic, and Christian Century. A young Uchida learns stories about both the U.S. and Japan: “Most of the stories my mother read to my sister and me were Japanese folktales or children’s stories” (27). Daily meals consisted of “a mixture of East and West” (28).      

Chapter 2 also introduces the Uchida’s involvement with the Japanese Independent Congregational Church of Oakland. On Sundays, Uchida’s parents stopped at “four or five houses, picking up children here and there until our car spilled over with them” (33). Mr. Uchida “sometimes wrote and mailed the weekly bulletins” (35) and for years Mrs. Uchida was president of the Women’s Society.

Uchida and her sister Keiko’s lives were infused with American and Japanese values. Their parents, “whose own lives had been structured by the samurai code of loyalty, honor, self-discipline, and filial piety” (36) instilled in the Uchida girls those beliefs, which “reflected Buddhist philosophy dominated by Christian faith. So it was that we grew up with a strong dose of the Protestant ethic” (36).

Chapter 2 concludes by exploring Uchida’s recollection that despite her Japanese qualities, “neither my sister nor I, as children, ever considered ourselves as anything other than Americans” (37). Uchida refuses to go to Japanese language school. As she gets older she realizes stereotypes people have against Japanese immigrants. This causes the young Uchida, who has not yet developed the social consciousness of her later university days, to reject her background, leaving her “sometimes ashamed of the Issei in their shabby clothes, their rundown trucks and cars [...]” (42). 

Chapter 3 traces Uchida’s recollections of Pearl Harbor. Uchida recalls studying for university exams, and that it was a regular Sunday like any other. But by the end of the day, the FBI arrest her father and other Japanese-American men. Paramount to this chapter is the characterization of Dwight Uchida’s courage despite his internment.

The Uchida family learns about the attacks on the radio: “‘Oh no,’ Mama cried out. ‘It can’t be true’” (46). Mr. Uchida echoes this sentiment: “‘Of course not […] And if it is, it’s only the work of a fanatic’” (46). Uchida herself was “more concerned about my approaching finals at the university than I was with this bizarre news and went to the library to study” (46).

When she returns home, FBI agents are with her mother in the kitchen. As the day progresses, Uchida’s “white friends came to see how we were, they were not permitted to enter or speak to my mother and sister, who, for all practical purposes, were prisoners in our own home” (47). That night, Mrs. Uchida leaves the porch light on, in case Mr. Uchida returns.

Instead, Mr. Uchida’s sent to Immigration Detention Quarters in San Francisco with about one hundred Japanese-American men. His family visits once and when they leave, watch “Papa go down the dark hallway with the guard and disappear around a corner […] There were rumors that men such as my father were to be held as hostages for atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers” (49).

Dwight Uchida is sent to an internment center in Missoula, Montana, where he remains determined to stay strong. Dwight exchanges a flurry of letters with his family, sending “detailed instructions on how to endorse checks on his behalf […] [and] about filing income tax returns […] He asked us to send him a check for a fellow internee who needed a loan” (49-50). The Uchida’s white friends send affidavits to Washington D.C. affirming Dwight Uchida’s loyalty to the United States. Because Mr. Uchida is among prisoners photographed only once, and rumors say those photographed twice become hostages, the Uchidas remain hopeful Mr. Uchida will soon be released.