Life Is a Wonderful Experience

About the Book

Educated during the American Army occupation in Japan, the author begins with her childhood memories describing the postwar era of Japan -- how “General Douglas MacArthur” saved a doomed nation and reformed it to a democratic state. Being raised in a traditional society, the author exclaims the women’s role from her own experiences: an insider’s view. Having lived in Tokyo, she saw Japan’s political, social and economic transformations. During 1970s after leaving Japan, she became an expatriate and studied Western Civilization in three different universities – Australia, Spain and Portugal – which resulted in her speaking four languages. While in Portugal she began her career as a photojournalist and covered political uprising known to the world as Portuguese Revolution (1974-1976). Upon moving to the United States residing in San Francisco, California, as a foreign correspondent-photojournalist, the book recounts her life journey of personal and professional experiences, covering numerous major social news events, and one of them was a different kind of uprising: the ‘gay revolution’ of the late 1970s to early 1980s which is now the one of the most controversial and politicized movements in the United States today. During 1980s she became a world travelogue-photographer and traveled the major parts of the globe extensively, and has documented her experiences in different countries and candidly expresses what she saw and what she thought, including many close-calls she encountered. Having experiencing deaths of her loved ones as well as having her own ‘death dreams’ and also miraculously surviving a near-fatal automobile-accident, she opened up her mind to a different dimension -- the life beyond the death and raised questions regarding our connection with the universe; the paranormal phenomenon that occur on our planet. Concerning the coming future, this autobiography book is written to inform any readers to contemplate and understand “our peoples, our planet, and our human awareness” in the 21st century.

About the Author

MARIE UEDA is a Japanese-born photojournalist and a book author. As a photojournalist she worked for The Guardian newspaper of London, England, and as an author she has written two books: Testimony of the Twentieth Century - Before and After the Berlin Wall (1996), and Japanese Surrender 1945 - Atomic Bomb, Emperor Hirohito and MacArthur (2018).