When The Emperor Was Divine By Julie Otsuka

When the Emperor Was Divine: Analysis In the midst of the long awaited ending of World War II, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into relocation centers across the west coast. After being held in the relocation centers for as little as weeks to as long as a couple months, the detainees were put on trains and sent to internment camps where they spent several years in isolation. In the novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, Julie Otsuka fuses historical content with fiction to tell the story of a family losing everything to the forces of Executive Order 9066.

The novel begins with a woman in her early forties becoming aware of a sign being plastered all over the town of Berkeley, California. The woman is standing at a post office window

The fact that the family has a picture of Princess Elizabeth, the princess of England, shows that the family is justs as American as those who are caucasians living in the United States. This shows the discrimination set in place by America’s society in the mid to late 1900’s. The picture of Jesus makes clear that the family is indeed Christian despite their nationality. Most Americans associate the Asian cultures with other religions such as Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism and Taoism. Regardless of the fact that the family are American citizens, people equate the appearance of the family to the religions based in the Asian cultures creating a strong feeling of discrimination. Otsuka uses this feeling of discrimination against the Oriental culture to explain how the woman packs the remainder of the family’s belongings. The woman packs certain items she knows that she can not take with her, “[s]he rolled up the Oriental rug in the living room… [s]he carried the tiny bonsai tree out into the yard and set it down on the grass beneath the eaves

It was here that the family was given their identification numbers and their long trek began to an unknown destination. The Japanese Americans along the West Coast were initially evacuated to multiple “relocation centers” or “short term detention facilities” where they were housed for as long as a couple months in unpleasant locations. The centers were located on flat, desolate land that had previously been used as fairgrounds and race tracks. The centers were surrounded by barbed wire fences making the “residents” feel even more like prisoners to their country. Many of the inmates in the short term detention facilities lived in recently vacated horse stalls and slept on straw mattresses. One man by the name of Shoji Horikoshi recalled his experience in a relocation center, “[o]f course, it was smelly there. The floors were wooden but I think they painted the walls with very thin paint, like whitewash, and the odor of the horses was strong” (Densho). The journey to these centers were long and unbearable for most of those being detained. The evacuees were placed on steam engine trains, most of which were in poor condition. As described by Otsuka, “[b]y late afternoon the train had run out of water. The sun shone through the dirty glass panes and the air inside was stuffy and hot. During the night in the mountains above Tahoe the steam heat had