Picture Bride

Yoshiko Uchida (1921-1992) was a Japanese American author. She was born in California to Japanese immigrant parents. Her parents were both educated Christians that were prominent in their community. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Uchida and her family were relocated to concentration camps like Tanforan in California and Topaz in Utah. Uchida worked as a teacher during her time in the camps.

Uchida’s personal life influenced much of her writing. Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation (1971) and Journey Home (1978) are young adult novels set in concentration camps. She also wrote children’s books about the camps such as The Invisible Thread (1991) and The Bracelet (1993). In 1982, Uchida wrote a memoir about her family’s imprisonment titled Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family. Picture Bride (1987) was her first and only adult novel about the camps.

While Picture Bride is a fictional novel, Uchida’s narration of Hana’s story is influenced by her own experience as a Nisei (meaning “second generation,” or a child of Japanese immigrants). Picture Bride’s description of concentration camps, in particular, draws from Uchida’s personal life and larger body of work. Many of the novel’s most descriptive passages are featured in the Tanforan and Topaz camp sections.