38 pages • 1 hour read
Yoshiko UchidaDesert Exile
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Symbols & Motifs
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Landscape
Uchida deploys various landscape descriptions that characterize and enrich the world presented in Desert Exile. As Uchida traces her life from Berkeley to Tanforan to Topaz, the landscape shifts from lush, beautiful, and filled with flowers and gardens to a cracked and barren desert caked in dust.
The Uchidas pass “Nevada sage brush country” (105), and “small farms, cultivated fields, and clusters of trees” (107), until the bus turns “into the heart of the sun-drenched desert and there in the midst of nowhere were rows and rows of squat, tar-papered barracks sitting sullenly in white, chalky, sand. This was Topaz” (107). There are no trees, only “skeletal greasewood” (107).
This shift in setting can be seen as symbolic of the emotional state of the Uchidas and other interned Japanese Americans. Uchida’s life was very much bustling before Pearl Harbor but becomes more barren while interned.
Flowers
Flowers appear as a classic motif of hope and regrowth throughout Desert Exile. Uchida also relies on language, using the word “uprooted,” which a reader connects with the motif of flowers torn from the earth. In spring 1942, when the government announces Japanese Americans must report to relocation centers, Mrs. Uchida’s home garden is ripped to pieces. She does not want to leave the flowers she tended, asthey represent everything good the Uchidas have accomplished. The Uchidas these dug up flowers with friends, signaling the hope of future meetings.
At Tanforan, flowers are replaced by barracks and horse stalls. Still, the Uchidas’ friends send fruits, signaling growth, and showing the family is not entirely cut off from the outside world. When the Uchidas and other internees pack to move further inland to Topaz, their Swiss neighbors, after being turned away the day before, bring Mrs. Uchida’s London smoke carnations, a specialty from her garden. When one group leaves Tanforan and another stays behind, a Japanese maintenance man hands out bouquets through a barricade. Again, Uchida seeds the motif of hope.
At the dusty, desolate Topaz camp, Uchida’s mother receives a bouquet of flowers, each stem wrapped in cotton, from a Doshisha professor she’d befriended in college. Still, at this point in the book, it’s the lack of flowers and growth so referenced in other chapters that stands out. While this lack of flowers is an autobiographical fact of Uchida’s experience, it reasons that as an author, Uchida made the decision to highlight how something grown by nature but planted by human hands can provide an important sense of hope.
Uchida recalls the final winter in Topaz:
We nurtured a single daffodil bulb a friend had sent us, planting it in an old tin can and watching it closely each day. When the golden flower finally burst open, it was an occasion of real rejoicing, and I was amazed at the pleasure even a single flower could bring (140).
Here, we see flowers serving as a bridge between those interned and those not, while at the same time attesting to the careful attention it takes to grow a garden, providing the motif of hope in the face of injustice.
Knitting
Instances of knitting occur throughout Desert Exile and represent industry and the shifts in the Uchidas’ socioeconomic reality, once in the camps. It also reflects the unflagging spirit and will to keep busy, demonstrating the will to fight against despair. In this way, knitting providesa sense of community and courage.
At the Uchida family home, Mrs. Uchida sews her daughters’ elaborate dresses, “embroidered fancy guest towels for many of her friends, and she must have made a hundred booties over the years for all the babies born in our church community” (15). Here, knitting is a caring way to connect people, and to domesticate the home. As a college student, her favorite teacher asked Mrs. Uchida “to embroider two and a half yards of scallops around one of her petticoats” (6). Mrs. Uchida worked long hours at night to complete the task, which because of the close bond between students and instructors, was a privilege for her.
Once interned, Mrs. Uchida knits curtains for the windows in the family’s horse stall. At Tanforan, “the women knitted a variety of fancy sweaters and dresses” (87). Mrs. Uchida also sews brightly-colored curtains for Uchida’s classroom. Here we see Issei Japanese-American women refusing to lose their optimistic, aesthetic spirits by continuing to apply their meticulous craft skills any way possible. It is a way to occupy time, project happiness, connect with their daughters, and project their identities beyond the confines of the camp. When Uchida leaves Topaz in May 1943, she wears a dress made by her mother.
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