(In the final days of World War II, Koreans were determine...)
In the final days of World War II, Koreans were determined to take back control of their country from the Japanese and end the suffering, caused by the Japanese occupation. As an eleven-year-old girl, living with her Japanese family in northern Korea, Yoko is suddenly fleeing for her life with her mother and older sister, Ko, trying to escape to Japan, a country Yoko hardly knows. Their journey is terrifying — and remarkable. It's a true story of courage and survival, that highlights the plight of individual people in wartime. In the midst of suffering, acts of kindness, as exemplified by a family of Koreans, who risk their own lives to help Yoko's brother, are inspiring reminders of the strength and resilience of the human spirit.
(In this work, Yoko Kawashima Watkins presents a collectio...)
In this work, Yoko Kawashima Watkins presents a collection of stories, based on the memories of a young Japanese girl, growing up in Korea prior to World War II, including "Dragon Princess", "Monkey and Crab" and "The Fox Wife".
(The author of the critically acclaimed "So Far from the B...)
The author of the critically acclaimed "So Far from the Bamboo Grove" continues her autobiography, describing the hardships, poverty, tragedies and struggles of life for her and her two older siblings, living as refugees in post-World War II Japan.
Yoko Kawashima Watkins is a Japanese-born American writer and lecturer. She is mostly known for her highly acclaimed work "So Far from the Bamboo Grove".
Background
Yoko Kawashima Watkins was born in 1933, in Japan. Her family lived in Manchuria, a region in northern China, where her father was stationed as a Japanese government official. The family eventually moved to Nanam, North Korea, where Yoko's father was overseeing Japanese political interests. The family lived in comfortable surroundings in North Korea until the events of World War II threatened their safety.
In the summer of 1945, as it grew obvious, that Japan was nearing defeat in the Pacific arena, eleven-year-old Watkins, her mother and her sixteen-year-old sister were forced to flee their home to avoid advancing Russian and North Korean communist forces. Their escape route included trains, a forty-five mile hike to noncommunist Seoul, South Korea, during which they were constantly threatened by straggling bands of soldiers and bombing raids, and the sea voyage back to Japan, where they found their family homes, reduced to rubble by Allied bombers. Yoko and her sister were joined by their brother, Hideyo, several weeks later after their arrival in Japan. Meanwhile, their mother died about the same time and their father languished in a Siberian prison camp, unable to rejoin his family for several more years.
With only the most meager of possessions, and saddened by the tragic death of their mother shortly after their return to Japan, Watkins and her sister, Ko, managed to keep themselves fed and alive.
Education
In her early years, Yoko, her brother Hideyo and her sister Ko practiced calligraphy, the art of serving and receiving tea and classic Japanese dance. After World War II, she finished her secondary schooling in Japan. Some time later, Yoko attended Kyoto University, where she was in an English-language based program.
After graduation from Kyoto University, Yoko worked as a translator at the Misawa United States Air Force Base, where she met her future husband, Donald Watkins, an American pilot. In 1955, Donald was transferred to the United States, where they lived in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon and finally settled in Brewster, Massachusetts.
In 1976, Yoko began her career as a writer. In 1986, she published her first work, entitled "So Far from the Bamboo Grove", the award-winning autobiographical novel for young readers, that describes Watkins’s dangerous escape from Korea in the face of a violent political upheaval. Painful memories of that period of her life prevented Watkins from beginning work on the book until 1976, when she finally asked her brother, Hideyo, to relate the story of his own escape, about which he had never spoken. The praise for the novel, as well as for its sequel, prompted Watkins to lecture on her childhood experiences and lend her voice to the call for a permanent end to war.
In 1994, she published another book, "My Brother, My Sister and I". Now living in Japan, with their mother dead and their father imprisoned in Siberia, thirteen-year-old Yoko and her two older siblings find themselves on their own in a chaotic world. They seek a shelter, where they can and try to find work, sometimes even cleaning toilets in order to gather enough money for food. In addition to these basic hardships, the three also find themselves at the center of an arson and murder investigation. While the children are bonded by their common plight, they are also siblings, and Watkins portrays the mounting tensions, petty jealousies and bossiness between them, that most readers can relate to. Eventually, older sister Ko find the means to send Yoko to school, where circumstances for the teen don’t improve very much. Ridiculed by her fellow students due to her poverty, Yoko nonetheless applies herself to her studies and graduates with top honors. "My Brother, My Sister and I" ends on a joyous note, with the return of the children’s father from his communist imprisonment.
In addition to writing, Yoko also gives lectures, visits schools, answers questions and gives advice to students.
Yoko Kawashima Watkins gained prominence for her book "So Far from the Bamboo Grove" (1986). Her other writings include "Tales from the bamboo grove" (1992) and "My Brother, My Sister and I" (1994).
Yoko received several awards, including the Parents’ Choice Award in 1986 and Judy Lopez Memorial Medal in 1995.
