On Dec. 7, 1941, Yoshiko Uchida, an educator and writer in her last year at University of California Berkeley, listened to the unbelievable news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On that day, her family’s life changed forever.
When she returned home that night, her father, a pillar in the Japanese-American community, had disappeared, taken away by U.S. government officials. In her memoir, “Desert Exile,” she recounts her mother’s hope that night: “Let’s leave the porch light on and the screen door unlatched. ... Maybe Papa will be back later tonight.”
He did not return. For several days, she and her family lived with uncertainty, not knowing where Papa had gone.