ipl-logo

Government Conflict In Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

939 Words4 Pages

Jett S. Backer
Mrs. Vermillion
Honors English 10
20 March 2023
Analyzing the Government Conflict in When the Emperor was Divine People all around the world have been wrongly oppressed for things that they didn’t do. When the people that get wrongly oppressed they usually get angry at the people that oppressed them or traumatized. In Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine, the characters, which are Japanese-Americans, are oppressed and have to deal with people that don’t like them because of their race and have to deal with the effects of that because the attack on pearl harbor really made the government worried about Japanese spies. Julie Otsuka uses a person versus society that shows that the government put Japanese-Americans in internment …show more content…

As the characters in this novel are Japanese-Americans the government takes them to an internment camp in Utah. However, when they got there they were treated like an animal or less than a person. “Then they would pin their identification numbers to their collars and grab their suitcases and climb onto a bus and go to wherever it was they had to go” (Otsuka 22). It says that they had identification numbers on their collars so they can’t even go by their real names and they didn’t even know where they were going. This has a long term effect on the main characters and all the people in the internment camps because its like they are losing part of their identity because they couldn’t go by their names so they realize that their identity is not valued enough to be recognized with a name. Even when they were losing their …show more content…

The Japanese-American people are oppressed and disliked in society. The people of America dislike these people because the government told them about the war against Japan, Pearl Harbor, and that the Japanese-Americans could be spies and help aid Japan in the war. “They said they’d been shot at. Spat on. Refused entrance to the local diner. The movie theater. The dry goods store” (Otsuka 67). The government has put Japanese-Americans in internment camps and because of that the American people believe that all Japanese-Americans are bad and made the Americans hate them. This could have long term effects on those people because some of them have been severely hurt or even killed and it might make them hate the people that did that to them. So for the people that are hurt or almost hurt, what happened to them can create severe mental problems. When the father returns home from his internment camp in New Mexico he seems different. “Now whenever we passed his door we saw him sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands in his lap, staring out the window as though he were waiting for something to happen. Sometimes he’d get dressed and put on his coat but he couldn’t make himself walk out the front door” (Otsuka 137). The father was put in a different internment camp than the mother, boy, and girl, and now he is back from the internment

Show More
Related
1284 Words | 6 Pages

Mary Matsuda Gruenewald tells her tale of what life was like for her family when they were sent to internment camps in her memoir “Looking like the Enemy.” The book starts when Gruenewald is sixteen years old and her family just got news that Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japan. After the bombing Gruenewald and her family life changed, they were forced to leave their home and go to internment camps meant for Japanese Americans. During the time Gruenewald was in imprisonment she dealt with the struggle for survival both physical and mental. This affected Gruenewald great that she would say to herself “Am I Japanese?

Read More
957 Words | 4 Pages

“Otsuka has published only two short novels, When the Emperor Was Divine and The Buddha in the Attic” (Streamas). During the times of internment, “Racism, sexism, and labor begin to erase them. Their evacuation and imprisonment in 1942 merely expedites this erasure” (Streamas) The struggles of living as an Asian American were much more intense during internment. Their names were replaced with a government issued id number and their houses were replaced with the block number your barrack was

Read More
1564 Words | 7 Pages

The novella when the emperor was divine by Julia Otsuka is about a Japanese family’s survival during the time of world war two and internment camps although their family has been separated from their father. They continue to keep living their life and surviving the treacherous times. The book further uses symbols to show many depictions of hope, discrimination, and disconnection between many peoples relationships. But most importantly, Julia Otsuka uses names to demonstrate the loss of identity, ultimately suggesting how the internment disconnected themself from their identities. The effect of the internment on the family’s identity had changed from the beginning to the end of the novel.

Read More
486 Words | 2 Pages

This means that the rest of the family are also considered aliens. By gradually giving information about the father Otsuka is able to paint the image of this family slowly as opposed to giving the readers all the information all at once. As time goes on in the book the readers learn more and more about the family, thus allowing the readers to see the family through Otsuka's perspective. Later on in the chapter the reader finds out the reason behind the family moving. The narrator thinks about waking up early in the morning to board a bus, “Then they would pin their identification numbers to their collars and grab their suitcases and climb up onto the bus and go to wherever it was they had to go.

Read More
1177 Words | 5 Pages

Zarif Rahman Ms. Bacon English 9-1 5 April 2023 When Fear Takes Over: Alienation and Isolation in When the Emperor was Divine Imagine if someone far away from a person commits a crime and then that person is sent to prison just because they look like the criminal, and once they leave prison, they are treated as if they are a criminal. This is what the family is forced to experience in Julie Otsuka’s, When the Emperor was Divine. The family is expelled from their home after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and is sent to a Japanese internment camp.

Read More
620 Words | 3 Pages

When the Emperor was divine is a very interesting book. It explains the story of the WW1 internment camps from the point of view of the Japanese people and what they went through. It also includes many forms of symbolism that can completely change the story’s meaning. It also tries to imply how “American” the Japanese-American internees really were.

Read More
1684 Words | 7 Pages

Like many children her age, the girl in Julie Otsuka’s novel When the Emperor was Divine had the opportunity to attend a “summer camp.” However, the camps that the girl and her family endured were not like traditional summer getaways but instead state-sponsored prisons designed to keep the populace “safe.” Instead of enjoying the water slides and rope swings that other children her age got to experience, the girl struggled with establishing an identity that fit with the rest of her society. With her use of neutral tone and language, Julie Otsuka explores the creation of the cultural identity that is established by the Japanese-American people as they are confined in Concentration camps designed to keep the nation safe. Pulled from their homes,

Read More
894 Words | 4 Pages

Weng and Harsfield Mrs. Weishaar ELA 1 May 16th, 2023 The Horrors of the WWII Japanese American Internment camps Japanese internment camps were a dark time in US history, many people have forgotten the troubles that Japanese Americans had faced during this troubled time. When the Emperor Was Divine is a book published by Julie Otsuka, a Japanese-American writer, which discusses the events leading up to and after the incarceration of the Japanese within America in WWII. The Japanese Americans were wrongfully taken out of their homes without any evidence of wrongdoing and were imprisoned due to prejudice and not necessity. Otsuka portrayed in the book that Inside these incarceration camps the conditions were unsuitable for human life, and

Read More
536 Words | 3 Pages

The boy’s description of the Japanese prisoners shows that he’s assimilated the prevalent racist beliefs about Japanese people. Using racially insensitive language, the boy expresses the stereotype that “all Asian people look alike.” Additionally, their perceived “inscrutability” was the exact reason why the U.S. government locked up innocent Japanese Americans citizens in the first place. According to Otsuka (2003), "On the first day of the camp, the mother tells him to never touch the fences and to never to say the Emperor’s name aloud".

Read More
681 Words | 3 Pages

Today, our society views the internment camps as devastating memories filled with oppression and human rights violations. All of the pain and suffering Japanese’s Camps caused, it taught us when we know better, we can do better 1946-1980 1) Pop Culture – Social: Heritage, Citizenship, & Identity

Read More
345 Words | 2 Pages

“When the Emperor was Divine” written by Julie Otsuka is a book about a Japanese American family who faces discrimination and is forced into an internment camp in World War II. The novel conveys the challenges they endure and the impact of the camps on their lives. In this novel, the family had to submit to American culture due to the pressure of being afraid of being the enemy causing self-hatred and internalized racism. When people are forced to submit to a culture they lose their sense of self.

Read More
1180 Words | 5 Pages

His father was taken away in the middle of the night for something he didn’t do. The boy watched as his father left with only a bathrobe and slippers on as he was denied his dignity and stripped of his humanity. This occurred in Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine, a book that depicts a family of Japanese Americans that were torn apart and sent to an internment camp. They experienced prejudice and racism while living in conditions that weren’t fit for thriving. This book represents the thousands of Japanese Americans that suffered during World War II because of the fear that stemmed from the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan.

Read More
1648 Words | 7 Pages

Dehumanization: Identity Stripping of Japanese Americans Dehumanization itself is the process of depriving a person or group of people of positive human rights. Identity stripping is similar in terms of reducing or removing one’s individuality by mocking, erasing, or minimizing one’s cultural and personal identity. Japanese internment is described as the U.S. government forcing the relocation of Japanese Americans to imprisonment camps during World War II, beginning in 1942. Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine Japanese internment camps dehumanized Japanese Americans through social isolation, use of derogatory and demeaning stereotypes regarding the Japanese, and physical and psychological abuse. To avoid any further contact with the

Read More
1010 Words | 5 Pages

Matsuda’s memoir is based off of her and her family’s experiences in the Japanese-American internment camps. Matsuda reveals what it is like during World War II as a Japanese American, undergoing family life, emotional stress, long term effects of interment, and her patriotism and the sacrifices she had to make being in the internment camps. Everyone living in Western section of the United States; California, Oregon, of Japanese descent were moved to internment camps after the Pearl Harbor bombing including seventeen year old Mary Matsuda Gruenewald and her family. Matsuda and her family had barely any time to pack their bags to stay at the camps. Matsuda and her family faced certain challenges living in the internment camp.

Read More
897 Words | 4 Pages

Discrimination is a powerful word that can describe how many Japanese Americans felt in the 1940s. The book When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka is a story about a Japanese American family whose father gets taken in the night by the police. It is a story about how the family's mother, daughter, and son navigate the Japanese internment camps. Being confined, constrained, isolated, and having their freedom taken away when they are transported to an internment camp are common elements of this family's experiences after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and can be seen on pages 45 and 46.

Read More

More about Government Conflict In Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

Related Topics

Open Document