By Oscar Acevado
Before coaching the United States’ Olympic team, Yoshihiro Uchida faced racism that only left him more determined to prove his doubters and detractors wrong.
Garden Grove, nestled between Los Angeles and Irvine, is where Uchida grew up and worked on his parents farm.
“Packing tomatoes or packing celery with your hand, get it all crated up,” Uchida said, “someone would come and pick it up, help the trucker pack up, and take our goods to the market.”
But the young Uchida and his family would go on to face a problem many first generation children face with their parents.
Many of the Japanese children in Garden Grove could not speak Japanese and did not know about their parents culture.
“We didn’t know too much about Japan and our parents, the Issei, as they grow older they looked at us and said ‘Our kids don’t know how to speak Japanese or anything about Japanese culture.’ Uchida said “Most of the Japanese-american kid, the Nisei, we only spoke in a broken English and Japanese put together.”
The community’s parents established a Japanese community center where the children could learn about their people.
Traveling teachers exposed the children to sumo, kendo and the sport that would become synonymous with Uchida, judo.
He moved up north and enrolled in San Jose State in 1940.
Uchida studied biology and worked as a student teacher in the school’s Judo program.
But Uchida life, and the lives of thousands of Japanese-Americans would change on December 7, 1941.
The Japanese surprised the United States with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and forced America’s entry into the largest war the world had ever seen.
Uchida wasn’t able to stay long, as he was drafted into the United States Army serving as a medical technician in 1942.
While Uchida worked in the Army’s medical corp, his parents received notice of Executive Order 9066.
“My parents were told they had to sell everything and move by the end of may, or they’d be arrested,” Uchida said. “They were evicted from the land they had been farming for many years.”
With growing paranoia over Japanese infiltration, President Franklin Roosevelt sent thousands of Japanese-Americans to internment camps.
While Uchida served his country, his parents were treated like enemies of the state.
“Even though I’ve been discriminated against, inside you get a bit stronger.” Uchida said “You say ‘Ok, we’re gonna beat this thing. We’re not gonna take it.’”
But his parents weren’t so lucky to have their lives ahead of them.
Already in their sixties, Uchida’s parents decided that instead of starting over from scratch again, that they would go back home.
Uchida’s parents spent the rest of their lives in Japan, working on a small plot of land that they owned.
But Uchida found his strength and flourished after experiencing rejection from is country.
“I served in the medical core, so I knew a bit about medical laboratories.” Uchida said. “I would watch guys grow bacteria, so I got a pretty good education just watching and helping him out.”
As his parents left, he graduated from San Jose State in 1947 with a degree in biological sciences and also taught judo to police candidates.
But his fellow countrymen did not make it easy.
“After you serve four years and you come back, they treat you like dirt. You can’t find rooms, you can’t go to school, you can’t find a job.” Uchida said
Filled with determination to show those people wrong, Uchida worked as a lab technician at the O’Connor Hospital and later was the lab supervisor at San Jose Hospital.
With help from Berkley’s judo and wrestling coach Henry Stone he would form the Amaetur Athletic Union.
The AAU set a new scoring system with three judges and separated competitors into weight classes, establishing modern judo as we know it.
But the same cycle has popped up for immigrants in the United States and it leaves Uchida wishing for President Trump to look back at his own past.
“There are some things guys never went through,” Uchida said. “I guess he looked down at anyone who wasn’t American by American white. I don’t think he was educated correctly. He forgets his ancestors came over and they were migrants just like everybody else.”
But he does think that we can get out of ignorance and isolation, and it comes from each other.
“The US is emphasizing education a lot, and I hope they all take that education and learn to associate to people,” Uchida said. “I hope they all learn how to get along, how to help each other. And when you get that, you start to really understand each other.”