[2] In Canada, she and her family were forcibly removed and incarcerated[3] at a Canadian concentration camp in the Slocan Valley during World War II.
In the 1960s she helped identify the link between pregnant women who had undergone abdominal X-rays and chromosomal birth defects such as Down syndrome in their subsequent pregnancies.
Irene's parents owned two bookstores, so it is fitting that after high school she went on to study English literature at the University of British Columbia.
After Pearl Harbor, intense anti-Japanese bias led Canada to enact the War Measures Act in February 1942.
After her father chose to return to his wife in Japan an exchange for Allied prisoners of war, Irene accepted the support of the United Church, which offered her a place to stay and encouraged her to finish her degree at the University of Toronto.
Uchida earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1946, intending to continue her education by getting a master's degree in social work.
[9] In her career as a professor at the University of Manitoba, Dr. Uchida facilitated two studies to investigate a possible connection between extensive maternal radiation and Down syndrome births.
Dr. Uchida published more than 95 scientific papers and received numerous awards for her research including Woman of the Century 1867-1967 for Manitoba and the Order of Canada in 1993.
[11] After suffering from Alzheimer's disease for over a decade, Irene died in a nursing home in Toronto on July 30, 2013, at the age of 96.