When the Emperor Was Divine | Julie Otsuka | A Moving Novel That Manages To Provide Evocative...

When the Emperor Was Divine | Julie Otsuka | Intrusion of all class divisions : business, child and women, college students, and 1/16 Japanese

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When the Emperor W...

	When the Emperor Was Divine Julie Otsuka Anchor, 2003 - 160 pages average customer review:based on 56 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Julie Otsuka?s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination?both physical and emotional?of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view?the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train ride to the camp; the son in the desert encampment; the family?s return to their home; and the bitter release of the father after more than four years in captivity?she has created a small tour de force, a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion. Spare, intimate, arrestingly understated, When the Emperor Was Divine is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times. It heralds the arrival of a singularly gifted new novelist.

From the Hardcover edition.

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A Moving Novel That Manages To Provide Evocative Details Using Spare Prose

WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE is nothing short of remarkable. In one hundred and forty-four very readable pages Julie Otsuka brings to heartfelt life the painful realities faced by Japanese Americans at the hands of a paranoid U.S. government during the World War II era. Otsuka (through flashbacks) skillfully depicts the central family's comfortable life in Berkeley, California prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. She vividly shows us the wrenching unfairness when the family is thrust in to deplorable desert "camps" that are experienced in Utah by the mother, son and daughter and in New Mexico by the father who is considered more "dangerous". Finally and most hauntingly we see the aftermath and continued mistreatment of the family due to the prejudice of many Caucasian Americans in the post World War II era. This prejudice made it impossible for the once successful father to return to employment and forced the mother who once employed a housekeeper to become a cleaning woman herself.

Although not as powerful or beautifully written as WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE, TALLGRASS by Sandra Dallas is another well researched novel focusing on a Japanese internment camp. Dallas's novel explores the impact the camps had on the remote Western communities where they were placed as well as the harm done to the displaced Japanese Americans.

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Intrusion of all class divisions : business, child and women, college students, and 1/16 Japanese

When the Emperor was divine gives the reader an comprehensive history of the internment of American Japanese Citizens. The compete degradation of constitutional rights was demonstrated clearly by the capture of the father, who was escorted away from his home, in bathrobe. The class distinction blurred completely making all Asian unloyal and criminal by race. The Japanese business man, who was well educated, highly productive, and very law abiding was treated, as a spy endangering national security. Demographic profiles used to target select individuals, detained with a trial and access to the Justice system, imprisoned for up to four years, returned back into society with apology or compensations for lost wages. The father returns bent with hardship, walking with a cane, and hair white. The mother and children have endured life at topaz, untolerated winds and sand, poor food selection, and intolerance caused from overcrowding. The children don't recognize their father, who have aged, and returns quietly.

The WWII Japanese American has forgiven and moved on. The bitterness and harsh words spoken between father and son, not to be relived and internment not be discussed. However, it happen and the reasons for the intrusion on civilized life must be explored. The Japanese American was not a troublemaker; nor was he a high risk class of people; he was an industrious, loyal, and conforming citizen. Fantasy verses fiction were not throughly examined and insubstantial research was feed to military decision makers resulting in incorrect conclusions. Plans to internment and the history of internment should have been a story not a historical event.

Political pressure must be maintained to prevent class discrimination and anti-Japanese legislation from ever happening again. The legal system must never to forfeit, if Justice exists, and all races must be given immediate access to the courts and due process of the law. The individuals truly protected by the law are those whom the high judges deem protect by constitutional umbrella. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.

The right for equality must be earned and the lessons of the thirteen internment camps retold to the next generation of American Japanese. The Japanese American must continue to tell the story of their injustice, so the event does not fade away.

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Prose Haiku

A jeweled haiku of a book (even if the ending does stumble a bit). Worth re-reading. While not especially written for children, this would be great for high school American history class (short, inclusive reading level because of the spare language, but high thought content). Would be excellent paired with Alastair Cooke's "The American Homefront," his 1942 unsentimental prose snapshot of America at war. "Emperor" is a marvelously American book.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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