Yoshiko Uchida’s Journey Home is written about a Japanese American family which undergoes various hurdles during their way back to home. The author Yoshiko Uchida herself belonged to an immigrant family. The novel is an autobiographical account of Uchida who saw the horrors of the aftermath of the Second World War. Journey Home is a sequel to Journey to Topaz (1971). The dominant theme of the novel is that ‘family tradition and loyalty overcome all the problems’ (Gerhart and Young 58). Moreover the author portrays the ‘determination’ of ‘Japanese-Americans’ to ‘show themselves loyal Americans and to overcome prejudice with upholding Japanese ideals’ (Coffey and Howard 174). The story is about the struggle of a surviving family that has to face discrimination in the country where they have been living as immigrants for many years and they have to fight for the search of their identity in an alien land.
The story of Yuki starts with Yuki’s nightmare that also stands for her whole life, ‘I can’t see, Yuki thought frantically. I can’t breathe’ (Uchida, Journey Home 3). The story is about the ‘fight’ against ‘poor living conditions, prejudice, the fact that her family has lost almost all its earthly possessions, and her separation from friends and relatives’ (Gerhart and Young 58). The central character, Yuki, has to strive against petty conditions in which she is encircled by the destiny. She hopes to ‘go back’ when ‘war is over’ and when ‘the United States and Japan stop fighting each other’ and when ;hate is gone’ (Uchida, Journey Home 8).
The author makes the themes of familial and communal relationships at the heart of his book therefore relationships are seen in a positive light in the novel. As Yuki’s ‘struggle’ is supported by ‘her close family, her best friend, the friend’s grandmother, and several others’ therefore ‘family tradition and loyalty overcome all problems’ (Gerhart and Young 58). ‘While stresses and strains are abundant the family grows stronger than it was before’ (Smardan 253). The family of Yuki faces hurdles in order to survive the aftermaths of war and the bond between the members of the family gets stronger as they undergo miseries together (Uchida, Journey Home).
Yuki’s ‘own difficulties are compounded by the physical and spiritual wounds sustained by her brother in the war with Japan’ (Gerhart and Young 58). Yuki’s life is similar to the ‘screaming desert wind’ which ‘flung its white powdery sand in her face’ and it ‘blinded her’, ‘choked her’, and ‘made her gag as she opened her mouth to cry out’ (Uchida, Journey Home 3). Yuki has love for her friend ‘Emi Kurihara’ who was not ‘safe’ and ‘carried on conversations with people who were hundred miles away’ as she believed in the strong relationship that would help to transmit her ‘message’ towards people she loves ‘no matter where they were’ (Uchida, Journey Home 6).
The book also throws light on the precarious status of the immigrants in the United States of America despite the fact that the U.S. is the ‘nation of immigrants’ but the Americans decided themselves as who could ‘join’ them and the result was the subsequent conflicts between the state and the immigrants (Zolberg 01).The immigrants of the U.S. lived life of poverty and unemployment as a consequence of the discrimination faced by the immigrants. Yuki’s ‘strange world of dreams and nightmares’ has nothing different with the life of the immigrants in the U.S as the petty condition of her ‘apartment’ at ‘Salt Lake City’ reflects the dilemma (Uchida, Journey Home 4). Her abode was also ‘found fo them’ by the minister of Japanese church’ than the U.S government (Uchida, Journey Home 4). The ‘Japanes’ were ‘excluded from the West Coast by law’ (Uchida, Journey Home 8). Yuki’s family, including her father, mother and ‘big brother’ Ken, were left to Topaz, ‘one of the World War concentration camps where all the Japanese of the West Coast had been sent by the government’ (Uchida, Journey Home 4).
The case of Japanese immigrants was different in the sense that during the Second World war the U.S. had to face major devastations as a result of the Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite the fact that the U.S. retaliated the attack on Pearl Harbor by the atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the government of the U.S. ushered a policy of revenge and non-acceptance against the Japanese who have settled in the U.S. for many years and were providing, like other immigrants, multiple benefits to the U.S. The president of the U.S. announced callously to send the Japanese in America to be thrown in the camps which the government has designed specifically to deal with a heavy hand with their enemies. ‘Anti-Japanese sentiment took different forms, from personal insults to major criminal incidents’ (Coffey and Howard 174).
The theme of love for home and coming back to it is not a new one and many novelists have discussed the theme with the portrayal of fictitious characters. Olaf Olafsson’s Journey Home and Robert Henrique’s The Journey Home are the novels in which the similar theme is dicussed. Even the title of the novels by Uchida and Olafsoon are similar along with the similar theme of returning home through a series of hurdles and difficulties in the wake of the journey. The difference, however, is in the nature of the plot. Uchida’s novel is far more serious and invites the sympathies of the readers as it describes the difficulties and ‘physical and spiritual wounds’ of Yuki, the protagonist, who wishes to return to home after detention in the ‘concentration camps’ (Gerhart and Young 58).
The fear is associated with the love for home as Yuki’s family had the constant ‘worry’ about ‘being blown into the desert to turn into a heap of sunbleached bones’ (Uchida, Journey Home 6). In the novel, Journey Home, ‘treats a topic receiving much attention today by creative artists expressing themselves in a variety of ways: the Japenese American evacuation of the 1940s’ (Smardan 253). In Journey to Topaz Yuki is shown to have sent ‘with her family to relocation center’ that is followed by the moving of family to ‘ a barren area in Utah’ (Smardan 253). The dilemma of ‘Japenese Americans is portrayed in the novel as what difficulties they have to face after ‘returning’ from ‘camps’ (Coffey and Howard 174; Uchida, Journey Home). The family of Yuki has to undergo abhorence, fright and violence in the U.S. owing to their very identity as an immigrant. Yuki’s father is ‘threatened by the small gang of agitators’ which ‘consumed’ the whole family wuth ‘awful fear’ (Uchida, Journey Home 5).
The immigrant families have to prove their fidelity to the land they are inhabiting but the bias against them is so strong that it effaces all of their efforts. ‘This is the repeat of the news bulletin’, as describes Uchida in Journey to Topaz, that ‘Japanese planes have attacked Pearl Harbor’ is received with dismal grief by the family of Yuki and they also reprimand the government of Japan for a fatuos step as this which would result in the change in the lives of the Japanese Americans (Uchida, Journey to Topaz: a story of the Japanese-American evacuation 5). The family of Yuki is loyal to the U.S. as they resent the attack by the Japanese as her father says, ‘It is a terrible mistake’ and must be ‘the work of a fanatic’ (Uchida, Journey to Topaz: a story of the Japanese-American evacuation 5).
The Japanese Americans were forced towards the camps, as a consequence of Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,where they were faced with various difficulties. The sequel of Journey to Topaz tells about the change that was waiting for the Japanese Americans in the U.S. as they return from the camps (Uchida, Journey Home 56). Although the family of Yuki expresses utmost fidelity for the land where they live, moreover Yuki’s brother, Ken, has lost his leg in the war where he fought for the U.S (Uchida, Journey Home 79). The ‘agitators’ of the U.S. ‘threatened’ the ‘Japanese’ in the ‘camps’ and ‘turned their anger at being in camp against anyone who, like papa(of Yuki), worked with the administration to keep the camp running smoothly’ (Uchida, Journey Home 5). The ‘agitators’ went on to ‘throw a stink bomb into their barack rooms’ (Uchida, Journey Home 5).
Yushiko Uchada’s Journey Home is the autobiographical novel that tells the story of an immigrant family which has to face bias by the very community they had inhabited for several years. The novel reflects how the immigrant families, like that of Yuki’s, have to face torture , detention and subsequent discrimination for the wrong doings of the politicians. Yuki’s character represents the immigrant individual who undergoes the agony of separation with her family and friends and once she, with her family, returns from the detention the series of difficulties restarts for Yuki’s families.
References
Coffey, Rosemary K. and Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard. America as Story: Historical Fiction for Middle and Secondary Schools. Chicago and London: ALA Editions, 1997.
Smardan, Laurence E. “The Family Coordinator”. National Council on Family Relations (1973): 253-254.
Uchida, Yoshiko. Journey Home. New York: Aladdin, 1992.
Uchida, Yoshiko. Journey to Topaz: a story of the Japanese-American Evacuation. Berkeley, California: Heyday Books, 2005.
Young, Dora Jean and Lillian N. Gerhart. “Journey Home(Book)”. School Library Journal (1979): 58.
Zolberg, Aristide R. A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. New York: Harvard University Press, 2006.