Picture Bride

Immigrants arriving in America for their first time are initially devastated at their new lives and realize their "golden lives" were simply fantasies and dreams of an ideal life in America. Immigrants from foreign countries, including those mentioned in Uchida's Picture Bride, faced countless problems and hardships, including a sense of disillusionment and disappointment. Furthermore, immigrants and picture brides faced racial discrimination not only from white men, but the United States government, as well. Immigrants were plagued with economic hardships lived in deplorable living conditions. Though nearly every immigrant and picture bride who came to America fantasized about an ideal life, they were faced with countless hardships and challenges before becoming accepted American citizens.

When an immigrant from a foreign land comes to America, immigrants hope to fulfill their golden dreams in the land of the free; however, as they quickly learn shortly after they arrive in America, their new lives are filled with hardships and disillusions. A picture bride, who arrives in America with a dream of living with a wealthy, successful, and handsome young man, is frequently disappointed to discover the realities such as the appearance and lifestyle of her future husband. When Hana first meets Taro, she discovers that "[Taro] no longer resemble[s] the early photo [his] parents sent [Hana]...he was already turning bald" (Uchida, 12). This shock of reality is not uncommon to picture brides, in fact, "many men in America send pictures to picture brides of themselves from when they were ten to twenty years younger...next to a beautiful car--owned by their boss" (Bunting, 1). Picture brides and immigrants arrive in America filled with hopes for a better life for themselves and their children and a wonderful new life in America. The shock and dissatisfaction immigrants and picture brides experience when they first arrive in America greatly contribute to their change in attitude from an optimistic mindset to a cowardly, hesitant behavior. Furthermore, picture brides quickly discover that their husbands were not wealthy business owners, as the men claimed in their letters, but their husbands were rather poor men, trying to scrape a living, and this reality check contributes further to immigrants' hopeless outlook to their new life. Hana is stunned at seeing her husband's shop, after visioning it as a grand shop on a busy street, discovering the shop to be not "nice at all. It was drab and dirty and smelled of stale food...[one] would expect something a bit finer" (Uchida, 34). Hana becomes disheartened as her visions were shattered by reality and a sense of betrayal from her husband's lies. She, like many picture brides and immigrants, expected too much of a new life, and when she discovers the way things really are, she feels deceived and dismayed. Accepting the truth and the reality of their new lives is a part of an immigrant's experience in moving to America and is a crucial part in shaping their attitudes in their new lives.

Once an immigrant becomes situated with their new life styles, the foreign immigrants are introduced to a sense of hatred and discrimination omnipresent in society. Many Americans and white men were not welcoming towards alien immigrants and expressed a great deal of discrimination and hatred. Immigrants and their families realized they had to learn to accept this hatred if they wanted to live in America, and eventually taught themselves to be tolerant towards discrimination, without knowing a motif behind a white man's disgust towards immigrants. Hana was able to accept the discrimination and eventually passed down her tolerance and acceptance down to, her daughter, Mary, who learn to submit to a white man's intolerance. Mary became aware that "her Japanese face denied her certain privileges...when she went to the City Plunge, she was told 'We don't think you'll enjoy swimming here'" (Uchida,160). Immigrants that experience a new life in America must learn to readily accept the fact that white men despise and discriminate against them, only because of their face or the color of their skin. In addition to racial discrimination, immigrants were restricted of many of their personal rights and freedoms, including the right to own land. With no sympathy from the government, the government imposed a law stating that "Asians cannot own land in California, even if [they] had the money to buy it. A law called the Alien Land Law prohibits it...[America] will not allow [Asians] to become citizens because [of their race]" (Uchida, 79-80). It is evident that not only did white men discriminate against immigrants, but United States government did, as well, to the extent where the where no help to immigrants was provided in order to let them retain their legal rights as citizens. Immigrants felt that they had no one to turn to for help besides others within their group of alienated immigrants, furthering destroying an image of a glorified life in America.

The public was not the only sect in society who discriminated against immigrants--the government began to confiscate immigrant's rights and freedoms unconstitutionally, despite immigrant's contributions to society and loyalty to America. The government, under the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, "authorized the secretary of war to prescribe areas from which any or all persons could be excluded: The President's Executive Order 9066. It means that [Japanese Americans were] all going to be evacuated one day soon...[they were] all going to be uprooted from [their] homes and interned without a trial or hearing" (Uchida, 187), clearly a violation of an American citizen's constitutional rights. Though the law was enacted to protect the American public after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States government crossed a fine line between protecting the country's citizens and stripping away the few rights and freedoms legal immigrants had. Furthermore, the government continued to abolish the rights of immigrants, namely Japanese Americans, proclaiming that "Japanese Americans could no longer travel more than 5 miles from their home, and [there] was an 8:00 curfew" (Uchida, 191)--the government was gradually relinquishing immigrants' freedoms, supposedly as an act of national security. However, by violating rights protected by the Constitution, such as setting a curfew and being interned without a fair trial; the government went to the extent where their actions were not rational and treated immigrants as unwelcome aliens in the "land of the free". In addition, the establishment of internment camps forced Japanese American immigrants to live and survive in inhumane conditions, such as overcrowded camps and terrible living

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