Good little novel on the internment experience. ( )

http://amiralace.blogspot.com/2007/04... ( )

Otsuka's style is terse, yet rich; her characters' perspectives are blunt, yet dynamic. Offering a glimpse of a moment in history (one I failed to realize lasted for a much longer time than a mere moment) which is often elided in the history books, this book left me wondering if the blatant mistrust and discrimination has found new outlet in our country. ( )

A novella about one Japanese-American family's experience with the internment camps during WWII. It is told from varied ponts of view, the wife, as she packs up the house and prepares to move, the 11 year old daughter (no one has a name) struggling with her identity, and mostly by the confused and sad 8 yo son - missing his Papa who was dragged off for questioning the night of Pearl Harbor in his bathrobe and has yet to return.

It was written poetically with alot of fragmentation, and random sentences in italics emphasizing memories. It starts off quite gripping as the wife makes some agonizing decisions about what they would take with them to the camp and I thought I was really going to be affected. But then, I don't know -- it bogged down a bit and seemed to have more style than substance.

Overall though, quickly read and its subject matter is one I feel all Americans need to be reminded of again and again lest we repeat our mistakes. My personal bias would have been to see this work more fleshed out into a full novel,however -- the author and her story had more potential. ( )

The international conflict that eventually became known as World War II affected more just than the soldiers fighting it: Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, victims of war and victors of war are all touched by the war and its devastation. It is possible that no novel reflects this so poignantly or poetically as Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine, which takes on the point of view of various members of a Japanese family in California during the time of Japanese internment in the early 1940s. The family members remain anonymous, though certainly not unfamiliar – Otsuka's method of keeping the family members nameless has the effect of making the readers identify and sympathize with the characters, but also helps readers to view these characters simply as human beings outside of their political, economic or racial identities. While oftentimes only hinted at, the rage surrounding the Japanese during the war is pervasive. Rocks, bricks and bottles are thrown through windows on multiple occasions, and the Japanese (or even other Asians perceived as possibly being Japanese) find themselves losing jobs and being denied basic services. In spite of this constant discrimination, the picture of the family before the war is a typical one: the nameless characters are depicted by Otsuka as being the all-American family engaged in all the images associated with being American. The disconnection implied by the anonymity of these characters is in effect both a narrowing of their boundaries to the reader as it is a distancing, both of which appear to be intended by the author. When the family returns home after nearly three-and-a-half years confined to the camp, the mother keeps her head down, unwilling or maybe unable to acknowledge herself to others unless absolutely necessary. In a lecture given to them, the children are taught to become anonymous as a way of self-preservation – to not answer questions in class even when they know the answer, to follow all rules no matter how unusual they may seem, and to remain common, unmemorable, and nameless. The novel's title, When the Emperor was Divine, hearkens back to a time before the war, when the Japanese American person was allowed to be both Japanese and American without having to contend with the possibility that being Japanese could be construed as being un-American. The family comes out of the experience of the war and the interment as wholly changed and seemingly unrecognizable. The novel exists as a warning that this kind of devastation can be avoided only if people are seen as something more than their names and racial identities. ( )