Eleven-year-old Rinko grows up in a closely-knit Japanese American family in California during the Depression, a time of great prejudice.

When her parents ask her to spend a month helping Mrs. Hata, Rinko is sure her summer vacation will be ruined. One disaster follows another during her visit, but Rinko discovers that things are not always as bad as they seem.

Yoshiko Uchida draws on her own childhood as a Japanese-American during World War II in an internment camp to tell the poignant story of a young girl's discovery of the power of memory.

Emi and her family are being sent to a place called an internment camp, where all Japanese-Americans must go. The year is 1942. The United States and Japan are at war. Seven-year-old Emi doesn't want to leave her friends, her school, her house; yet as her mother tells her, they have no choice, because they are Japanese-American. For her mother's sake, Emi doesn't say how unhappy she is. But on the...

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, everything changed for Yoshiko Uchida. Desert Exile is her autobiographical account of life before and during World War II. The book does more than relate the day-to-day experience of living in stalls at the Tanforan Racetrack, the assembly center just south of San Francisco, and in the Topaz, Utah, internment camp. It tells the story of the courage and strength displayed by those who were interned.

Replaces ISBN 9780295961903