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When The Emperor Was Divine

3.65 of 5 stars 3.65 · rating details · 5,999 ratings · 1,143 reviews

For use in schools and libraries only. A story told from five different points of view chronicles the experiences of Japanese-Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps.

Hardcover, 160 pages

Published 2003 by Viking (first published 2002)

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Sep 09, 2012 Megan Baxter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

How do you write about trauma? Are you verbose and expansive? Terse and straighforward? In this case, you use elegant and spare prose that brings home the extent of the wrong by never quite stating it in so many words.

When The Emperor Was Divine is a short book, but exactly as long as it needs to be. It is not stridently angry, it is quiet and sorrowful, and I think, anger simmers slowly below the surface, but is not and cannot be let out.

Julie Otsuka has told the story of the Japanese internm...more How do you write about trauma? Are you verbose and expansive? Terse and straighforward? In this case, you use elegant and spare prose that brings home the extent of the wrong by never quite stating it in so many words.

When The Emperor Was Divine is a short book, but exactly as long as it needs to be. It is not stridently angry, it is quiet and sorrowful, and I think, anger simmers slowly below the surface, but is not and cannot be let out.

Julie Otsuka has told the story of the Japanese internment in the United States during the Second World War through an unnamed Japanese family. The unnaming, which I only noticed near the end, is deliberate and powerful. The main characters are the son and the daughter, the mother and the father. Mirroring how much was stripped away from them during the war, this one family exists without names. This both universalizes their experience while allowing it to remain particular. I can imagine many ways in which this particular narrative trick could backfire, but it works here.

As the book starts, the mother sees the posters announcing the upcoming internment, the preparations she is required to make, what she is allowed to bring. The father has already been taken away, months earlier. They are not to be sent to the same place. She makes her preparations calmly, methodically, and they depart.

And spend years in an internment camp, where the days go by, and they try to keep a sense of self in a world where most markers of identity have been stripped away. They are not harmed, they are not physically injured, but the writing style emphasizes the dehumanizing nature of such an action, and perils of monotony and captivity.

The world outside is not let off the hook, either. They return, eventually, and had created stories of how they would be welcomed back, but the hates the war fostered have not dissipated, and nationalistic anger still simmers under the surface. But the violence that takes place in this book is never overt, never physical. It is nonetheless present.

Will they be able to find a sense of self again? Or who will? When fear surrounds you, when the government can cut you out of a crowd, divorce you from your life, and hold you apart from the rest, what else could they do?

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Apr 27, 2012 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Lovers of understated emotion

Recommended to Mark by: itself

The reasons I can pick up or purchase a book veer from recommendation and suggestion, which seems normal and sensible, through its association or appearance in a previous read, understandable and explicable, or its fabulous title, thank you Dan...up to it's being a lovely looking book.

Whenever i go to Hay on Wye, a marvelous town on the welsh/english border containing 37second hand book shops, I cringe at the shops that sell leather bound books by the foot or metre so as to populate some wealth...more The reasons I can pick up or purchase a book veer from recommendation and suggestion, which seems normal and sensible, through its association or appearance in a previous read, understandable and explicable, or its fabulous title, thank you Dan...up to it's being a lovely looking book.

Whenever i go to Hay on Wye, a marvelous town on the welsh/english border containing 37second hand book shops, I cringe at the shops that sell leather bound books by the foot or metre so as to populate some wealthy non-readers library and yet every now and again I have to recognize that i have bought books purely because of how they look or feel in the hand. This long intro is to explain why I came to be reading this first novel of Julie Otsuka speaking of the little known action by the American Authorities after Pearl Harbour in which they forcibly removed from their homes and imprisoned in desert camps japanese americans for the duration of the war. All I can say is i am so pleased i like nice looking things. Great, great book. Goes to prove you can judge some books by their covers.

The unnamed family, quiet, unassuming and industrious, is suddenly ripped apart by the high-handed panic of the Government. The husband/father taken off in bathrobe and slippers for interrogation and, as we would guess from his state five years later, abuse and shortly afterwards his wife and two young children are herded onto trains with other prisoners, guilty of nothing more than having differently shaped eyes, different coloured skin and taken to concentration camps in the deserts of Utah.

This is the story. Nothing more happens then their being taken away, imprisoned and then returned and yet everything does change. The cruel brutality of prejudice and rejection seen through the eyes of two children growing to maturity with the over-riding feelings of unstated guilt and blame for being different, the way in which certainty and acceptance can be dragged from under the feet of a woman previously secure in her comfortable lifestyle by her simply having been born in the wrong country; the future and humour and repsect of a man being drained or washed out of him simply because he isn't white.

Otsuka does not dwell on vicious violence or discrimination. She does not hold forth at great length on the behaviour of 'the other', all she does is simply, quietly and very movingly place before the reader the hidden results of prejudice and blind fear by allowing us entry into the tragedy of one hidden family. It is beautifuuly understated and incredibly moving for that.

The relationship of the brother and sister is wonderfully real. At one point the boy who adores wild horses watches them as they run by the side of the train taking the family to their prison. Weeks later, as they eat their stew and he wolfs it down enthusiastically he asks his sister where the cooks have got the meat. She answers drily. 'You rememeber those mustangs we were watching .....its them'. This sort of natural digging and teasing Otsuka does well. The girl is a great creation, dry, cooly witty and yet very vulnerable. She also communicates the burden of guilt the children take on as they think it must be their fault, something they did or even they begin to look to the memory of their father and wonder whether he is the guilty party.

Yet it is the relationship of the mother and father that breaks your heart. They hardly meet in the novel because it covers their enforced seperation but you feel their love. You see his guilt for failing to fulfill his marital promises, you know of her sorrow at her casual indifference to a request he made for a glass of water hours before he was taken and how this indifference cripples her but it is the beautifully simple reunion on the train station that tears you.

'He put down his suitcase and looked at her.
"Did you...." she said
"Every day," he replied. Then he got down on his knees and he took us into his arms and over and over again, he uttered our names, but still we could not be sure it was him'

This probably seems nothing but Otsuka moves to this moment and it is a stroke of genius(less)

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Nov 22, 2009 Jeanette rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-fiction, historical-fiction, america, world-war-two-fiction

This is a very fast and worthwhile read about a Japanese family who suffers the indignities of the World War II internment camps here in the U.S. This book can easily be read in two or three hours if you have uninterrupted time. The construction is rather floaty and impressionistic rather than linear, but the prose is good and clean and easy to follow.

Prior to reading this, I'd only read about the Manzanar camp in California. So it was interesting to read about the Topaz camp in Utah. The last...more

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Mar 27, 2012 Barbara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: immigration, historical-fiction, war

I am back for another taste of Julie Otsuka's writing. It's another trim one! She certainly has the knack of saying much with brevity and skill- and making her point (s)!

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Many books have been written about the outrageous internment of Japanese Americans during WW II. There have been respectable treatments of this topic, such as Farewell to Manzanar, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Snow Falling on Cedars, to name a few....more

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Mar 06, 2009 Amelia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Of all the books I've read about the Japanese-American internment camps, this one wasn't my favorite. But I'd still recommend it. It focuses on a family - mom, dad, girl and boy - and how they dealt with the ordeal before, during and after. The family is forced to leave their home in California and stay in a camp in a Utah.

The writing style was unique: unsentimental, simple and poetic. The story was gripping, but it was a bit choppy and left some holes. It's a short read, just under 145 pages, a...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Anne-Victoria rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was the book I thought I was picking up when I started reading Buddha in the Attic. I loved this book,so beautiful and you feel the pain of each member of the family Otsuka focuses on and learn how the camps harmed them and how they survived or did not. I would recommend reading Buddha first and then When the Emporer was Divine. I am hoping she writes another to follow or correspond in same time frame different family or individual.

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May 21, 2008 Dana Melinda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those who question society, and who love great writing

Shelves: my-favorite-books

I loved how different this book is from many others I've read. It's written from the point of view of several characters, whose names are never mentioned. It almost seems like the author excluded the names to make them appear generic, as if they could be any Japanese person living in America during World War Two.
This book explores the thoughts and feelings of members of one Japanese family before, during, and after they've been shipped off to a desert camp during WW2. I was left at the end with...more

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May 18, 2013 Ms.pegasus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone interested in American history

Shelves: fiction, history

An innocuous assignment like drawing your family tree might have elicited a blank from author Julie Otsuka's children, but, family histories and treasured heirlooms were only the least memorable of the casualties of Executive Order 9066. Her story opens in 1942. In an early scene the mother burns all traces of their ancestry: Letters, photos, even the silk kimonos she brought all the way from Japan. The past is erased and time moves only forward – always, and painfully.

The greater loss is of th...more An innocuous assignment like drawing your family tree might have elicited a blank from author Julie Otsuka's children, but, family histories and treasured heirlooms were only the least memorable of the casualties of Executive Order 9066. Her story opens in 1942. In an early scene the mother burns all traces of their ancestry: Letters, photos, even the silk kimonos she brought all the way from Japan. The past is erased and time moves only forward – always, and painfully.

The greater loss is of the security of childhood and community for the Japanese of the west coast.
Otsuka distances her own personality from her narrative. She selects a portrait of a single family to illustrate all of that loss. Her characters are unnamed. There is the woman, the girl, the boy, and the father. Even the family pet is White Dog. That sense of opaqueness fits a culture where a popular name for the firstborn son is Ichirō (First boy child). The result is a story of almost unbearable sadness purged of sentimentality. The narrative is unforgiving and relentless, fueled by a pure flame of moral outrage.

She employs with extraordinary skill a succession of contrasts. The ordinary banter of the woman with a hardware store owner is contrasted to the averted looks of the family's neighbors when they are released from Topaz. The dream-like image of mustangs galloping across the plains contrasts with the grim camp meals which include horse meat. Their house in Berkeley shaded by a persimmon tree and surrounded by iris beds and grassy lawn is contrasted with the dry dust of the Utah desert. A stand of willow trees is planted as a windbreak. As the woman predicts, they all die. There is insufficient water in the desert to sustain them. The open range of Nevada, seen from the windows of a darkened train are contrasted to the barbed wire and armed soldiers encircling the relocation camp. The sense of dignity and privacy that mark this family's life is contrasted to the image of the father being arrested in the middle of the night, wearing his slippers, and the horse stalls that become their makeshift temporary home. Finally, there are the hopeful letters of the father contrasted to what the reader can infer is the reality. It is a reality made concrete when the father is finally released from prison.

Otsuka's writing captures sounds and smells as well as sights. Her rhythms suggest the rolling sea of anonymity. Of Topaz she writes: “Three times a day the clanging of bells. Endless lines. The smell of liver drifting out over the black barrack roofs. The smell of catfish. From time to time, the smell of horse meat. On meatless days the smell of beans. Inside the mess hall the clatter of forks and spoons and knives. No chopsticks. An endless sea of bobbing black heads. Hundreds of mouths chewing. Slurping. Sucking. Swallowing....”

Finally her concluding chapter is the ultimate contrast. Up to this point, we have seen the points of view of first the mother, and then the children. The final chapter, however, is told in first person. For the first time, the father speaks. It is the conclusion to an emotionally wrenching book.

Readers will undoubtedly be inspired to search for photos from this period. The following link is one example. http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Tanfor...
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Apr 13, 2013 thewanderingjew rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Just as the first chapter sets the stage for this brief but moving, heartbreaking novel, as the unnamed woman and her family prepare for an unknown journey into an unknowable future, the reader will put aside their plans for the day, their chores, their appointments, and simply prepare to keep reading, captivated by a tale that is so immense in its cruelty, so unfair in its scope as to be unimaginable by most people, and yet, this horror, this stain upon our nation, truly took place under the wa...more Just as the first chapter sets the stage for this brief but moving, heartbreaking novel, as the unnamed woman and her family prepare for an unknown journey into an unknowable future, the reader will put aside their plans for the day, their chores, their appointments, and simply prepare to keep reading, captivated by a tale that is so immense in its cruelty, so unfair in its scope as to be unimaginable by most people, and yet, this horror, this stain upon our nation, truly took place under the watchful eyes of an America steeped in fear.
The brutality making headlines in Europe, had now marched lockstep to the United States, as an entire race of people were imprisoned for their race, their heritage, their religion, their beliefs, and although not as brutal as Hitler’s tactics were, the disgraceful and shameful behavior had an enormous impact on innocent people who truly believed they were Americans. Their lives were ruined as they were taken away, uprooted. Their belongings were looted and their homes vandalized. Americans were angry and felt justified in their cruelty and blindness. Why didn’t we imprison, Germans or Italians? Was it because they looked like us, because they didn’t attack us directly? The behavior was shameful and the blight it placed on the history of this country can never be erased.
The author does a monumental job of setting the scene, imagining characters who remain nameless, which made them nondescript, removed them emotionally from the narrative, and, at the time, from the minds of the people perpetrating the cruelty. It was as if the strangers and their suffering had no connection to reality, to those who participated in their humiliation, or to us, the readers. We, as they, were merely observers; we don’t share in the guilt. We wear blinders.
It begins with the woman. She is tired and overworked, alone and overburdened. Her husband is in prison. We see her kill the dog, without emotion, set the beloved parrot loose without a tear. She simply, stoically, does what has to be done. She has no other choice.
The Japanese were obedient. Although they were Americans, truly believed they were, they were all displaced and disowned because one among them might be a traitor. How could you know which one? You had to remove the tumor, all of it. Didn’t you?
We meet the young girl, a mere child, 10 years old, full of life. She doesn’t realize this adventure will be longer and lonely. She will enter puberty there, become a woman, away from her only home, and she will be forced to adapt. There is also her 7-year old brother, an innocent as well, playing with her as if they are going on vacation, not to a relocation area which was really a “prison” by any other name. He is missing his father desperately, wondering where he is, what is happening to him, will he ever return. Everything was unknown, a secret. He lived in his imaginings.
The father was a handsome, strong, moral man who instilled his family with hope and values. In prison, he loses all hope; he is demoralized when he returns. He is changed. He was taken away in his bathrobe, humiliated and not afforded the rights of a citizen. He was, suddenly, an enemy alien. So he returned, when the war ended, no longer having hope or a future. But, everyone suffered, didn’t they? Wasn’t it a sacrifice all had to make for the health and safety of the country?
It is really impossible to justify war when one weighs the price that is paid. The soldiers’ families were torn asunder, as men did not return home, as those that did, returned broken. All of the families were bereaved and forever changed.
As you read, you can’t help but compare the cattle cars that transported Hitler’s victims, to the trains transporting the internees; you will see the gymnasiums, the gathering places where the Japanese were assembled and then your mind will jump to the squares where the demoralized Jews gathered; the confusion of both groups will be similar, at first, their fears will be the same; where were they going, for how long? The Jews were a peaceful people; they went quietly into the night, as the Japanese did, to an unknown fate. While the one was truly a temporary if unjust transport, and the victims weren’t murdered or starved as the other nameless, numbered victims were, they were forever scarred by their experiences. In her short thoughtful sentences, this author has written a beautiful testament to the silent suffering of a people which will make the reader wonder about the cruelty that we are all capable of committing, and wonder how was this allowed to happen?
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Apr 06, 2013 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When the Emperor was divine (World War II time), those of Japanese heritage with American citizenship living in the US, were evacuated to prison-like camps. In this case, a Father was seized first, then the family, a Mother, a girl and a boy, acceded to an order to leave their home. The author never gave these people names; they represent an "everyman" concept in the book. They could be anyone who experienced evacuation!

The book is a fast read. Descriptions are simply written but evoke the feel...more

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Mar 14, 2013 Susan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I finished reading "The Buddha in the Attic", I wished the book had continued with what happened in the internment camps for Japanese during WWII. Then I found out that the author had indeed written such a book before she wrote the one I had read already. Thus I read the two books in historical order but not in the order they were written. "When the Emperor Was Divine" focuses on one family. The mother and her two children, a boy of 8 and a girl of 11, are sent to a camp; the father has alr...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Minutepapillon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Une lecture qui vient compléter ma précédente du même auteur. L'écriture est tout aussi adroite. L'auteur suit une seule et même famille cette fois au cours de leur évacuation et relocalisation plus de 3 années durant dans un camp dans une zone désertique de l'Utah.

"Empruntant largement à l'histoire de ses grands-parents, déportés comme des centaines de milliers de citoyens américains d'origine japonaise, après l'attaque de Pearl Harbour, Julie Otsuka retrace le destin d'une paisible famille de...more

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Dec 23, 2012 Adam Rabiner rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A short novel told mostly from the perspective of a young boy of 8 but also his older sister and mother. All remain nameless (perhaps reflecting the anonymity with which they were regarded by the U.S. government - just a number). The story chronicles the last days of freedom of a Japanese-American family, the mother's and children's internment in a camp in Utah for 3 years during work War II (the father was taken away by the FBI the day Pearl Harbor was bombed) and the eventual reunification of...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Otsuka's work is so haunting. Lovely. Lyrical. "Economy" was a word used by a reviewer to reference her style. Not the most elegant of words but true - her ability to capture the spirit of a place and time in just a few words is incredible.

Like her other book, this is more about the subject than the characters or plot but it is the details brought out by the characters that make this so real. Otsuka seems to capture every angle and nuance of the experience of people held captive at the US's Jap...more

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Oct 18, 2012 Carol Waters rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It is what it is. A family of four are required to respond to both the appearance of government agents who remove the Japanese-American father from his home under cover of darkness to a camp for political prisoners in New Mexico, to the three survivors who await their removal to another series of camps as mainstream American government officials lose their marbles in the 1940's. These people speak English, go to American schools, attend Christian church, eat both American and Asian foods, have a...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Ms. Littell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the one book, one community novel for Loudoun County Public Libraries this year. It covers one family's experience with the Japanese Internment Camps during World War 2.

I read it in approximately an hour and a half on a flight from Omaha to Dallas. It was good, and I liked its style but some of its vagueness prevented me from getting into it more. None of the Japanese characters have names. The three sections of the novel cover one day before leaving for the internment camps, one section...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Oscar rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011-2012

When the Emperor Was Divine is a book that took time during WWII in 1940. It was based on a Japanese-American family, that like thousands of other Japanese, had to go through internment camps in America. Although the book never says the names of the family members, the book changes view from each family member. Soon after the attack on pearl harbor, the father was taken by the government for being thought to be apart of an American government conspiracy. People started looking at the family dif...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Jeanne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book has been sitting on my shelf since 2009 when it was the "Vermont Reads" selection. I should have gotten to it earlier. Its a very spare book about Japanese American internment in 1942. What I liked about it was the quiet emotion: the book is told in a very factual way yet you can feel the devastation. First the father is taken away one night by the police. Soon, posters go about announcing the interment and so mother goes about her business in a straightforward way, packing up the thin...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Sian Rips rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When the Emperor was Divine was very sad in that it captured the lives of a Japanese family, sent from their homes and taken to an interment camp during World War II. This book told of their struggle at the camp as well as the incredibly different life they lived after their return.

On thing that I really liked or what drew me to this book was the "all to real" feeling. The author's writing style and descriptiveness made me feel so much emotion of what it must be like for each and every main char...more

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May 24, 2012 Pamela rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In anticipation of reading Julie Otsuka’s acclaimed “Buddha in the Attic” for a book group, I decided to first read her earlier novel: “When The Emporer Was Divine”. It is a short book, very readable, about a Japanese family that is sent to an internment camp in the U.S. during World War II. The father is taken from their family home after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and then the mother and 2 children are taken to a camp in Utah shortly thereafter. They remain in conditions that are rat...more

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May 20, 2012 Louise rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

Story Description:

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group|October 14, 2003|Trade Paperback|ISBN 978-0-385-7281-3

The debut novel from the PEN/Faulkner Award Winning Author of The Buddha in the Attic

On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family’s possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese-Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be upro...more

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May 08, 2012 Susanhayeshotmail.com rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Still waffling over my rating for this very short little book. It seems better than just okay ... it's beautifully written and the fact that I'm still thinking about it would confirm it's inclusion in the "I truly liked it" four star category. Dithering complete. Onward to the review.

This poignant little novel is about the story of one unnamed family who are arrested, shipped to an internment camp and ultimately return home at the end of WWII. That's it. You never learn their names, which at fir...more

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Apr 19, 2012 Sandy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-group, historical-fiction, california

The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII is seen through the eyes of a family of four, whose father is arrested from his Berkeley home the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Some months later the mother and her elementary-school aged daughter and son are sent to the Topaz internment camp in Utah. The author shifts voices to each member of the family, and although each is distinct, they each are expressed with a dispassionate detachment. This captures the cruelly surreal circumstances, bu...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Christina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club-books, contemporary-fiction

The story of a Japanese family sent to the American internment camps, this is a touching and thoughtful book. The family is never given names, making their story both more distant and closer, as it could have been any family, anywhere in America that this happened. In fact, the father's chapter seems to speak for all Japanese (and some Korean) men who were taken away, imprisoned, and questioned just for the offense of being Japanese, no matter their citizenship status. They were the enemy, guilt...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Adrienne added it · review of another edition

When the Emperor Was Divine

The Outcasts of this Country
The boy on the train misses his father. He dreams about him every second he can and smells his shoes so he can remember him. His sister by his side is living during terrible times and still has to go through adolescence. The mother with her family is very confused, upset, angry, and hurt, but holds it all in for the sake of her children. Her family’s being torn apart, their lives made miserable. They return home with no dignity, just more s...more When the Emperor Was Divine

The Outcasts of this Country
The boy on the train misses his father. He dreams about him every second he can and smells his shoes so he can remember him. His sister by his side is living during terrible times and still has to go through adolescence. The mother with her family is very confused, upset, angry, and hurt, but holds it all in for the sake of her children. Her family’s being torn apart, their lives made miserable. They return home with no dignity, just more shame. But what did they do? They did nothing but be born. Some of their friends from their old life spoke, but most ignored them. Imagine being gone from figuratively the face of the earth for a stark four years, and finally coming back home to more hatred and isolation. The outcasts of this country have now come home.
Inspired by the novel When the Emperor Was Divine.

Japanese Americans were disregarded as citizens, as human beings after December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese Americans who lived on the west coast were all sent to interment camps. Many men were unjustly arrested, because if you were Japanese American, you were a criminal. During 1941-1945, if you were Japanese American a stranger probably lived in your home while you lived crowded and crushed with thousands of other families. You shared everything. Sometimes you never had private moments and sometimes you were the loneliest person in the world. Your old life was taken from you; your new life was bland. When you were utterly placed in your old life again, it was never the same. You’re never the same. You’ve just had your innocence stripped from you. Time stolen from you.

When the Emperor Was Divine is a novel about an anonymous family, a country, and its prejudice. The father is taken away by the FBI because he is “suspicious”. Months later, his wife, daughter, and son get one days notice that they are being uprooted from their home to detention camps. The children are confused, bored, and they long for their father in many ways. The mother slowly lets her guard down as time goes by. After four years of isolation and misery, the family returns home. Their home has been lived in by a stranger. The family must pretend to stay humble and not grab anyone’s attention so they stay off the radar. The father returns, and since he is different from the torture he has been through, the family is truly never the same. Everyone depended on the father being like he was four years ago so that everything seems normal, alright, like life again.
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Jan 28, 2012 Marcy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a sad story about the internment of a Japanese family. There is foreshadowing at the beginning of the story as the mother is packing up clothes and locking up important house items in a room of a white house in Berkeley, California. She talks gently to the family dog, and then kills him with a shovel and buries him. Her going away story is heard, but the reader does not know why this family is uprooting, or where yet.

Next the reader finds the mother, daughter and son on a train, bound for U...more

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Dec 27, 2011 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow, this thin volume was really powerful and intense, the story of one family and their experience before, during and after their stay in a World War II Japanese internment camp. She switches perspectives between the various family members, and it's gripping to hear the kids' perspectives. It's highly moving and I super-recommend it. Here's some sample dialogue that pulls at your heart, as the mother reminisces to her young son:

"When I first met your father I wanted to be with him all the time....more

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Dec 12, 2011 Kaptica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Right to the nitty gritty, “When the Emperor was Divine”, by Julie Otsuka (Anchor Books, ISBN 978-0-385-72181-3), was a unique and entertaining perspective of Japanese-American internment during WWII in the U.S. The detail and imagery is compelling and vivid. The material is inviting, easy-to-read, and condensed into a novel that can be read in only a few hours.

The novel follows a Japanese-American family who receives notice that they must travel from their home in California to an internment ca...more Right to the nitty gritty, “When the Emperor was Divine”, by Julie Otsuka (Anchor Books, ISBN 978-0-385-72181-3), was a unique and entertaining perspective of Japanese-American internment during WWII in the U.S. The detail and imagery is compelling and vivid. The material is inviting, easy-to-read, and condensed into a novel that can be read in only a few hours.

The novel follows a Japanese-American family who receives notice that they must travel from their home in California to an internment camp due to open war with Japan. This imprisonment has been one of the most controversial subjects in American history due to the subjugation and overt policy of removal.

The novel records and portrays the lifestyle of internment and later the return of internees to their homes. That is, if their homes were still there. Ms. Otsuka’s depiction is deep and shows the ostracization of an entire people. The remarkability of the event is how arguments can honestly be made that the subjugation was brutal and unethical, but that it may also have been justified due to spying and the possibility of violence without intervention. However others want to call it or tell themselves so they can sleep at night, Japanese-Americans were imprisoned due to their heritage. There is no ifs ands or buts about it.

At times the structure of the novel is somewhat unfamiliar and lacking. The flow of the plot through different characters is innovative, but also interruptive; especially when some characters are given a much greater amount of attention.

The lack of names for the family was at times distracting, but did not detract from the purpose or depth of Otsuka’s writing. This novel is a true glimpse into the life of a Japanese-American internee and the uncertainty felt when freedom and livelihood depends on the outcome of conflict thousands of miles away.

“When the Emperor was Divine” is a must read for those who enjoy contemplating the themes of morality and justice or simply to enlighten oneself concerning a forgotten aspect to American history.

-Kaptica(less)

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Dec 05, 2011 Cameling rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese in WWII, thousands of American Japanese were arrested and held for questioning or made to board up their businesses and homes, taking only what they can carry and put on trains which took them to internment camps set up around the country.

The author concentrates on the lives of 1 American Japanese family during this period. The father, a successful businessman, was taken away in his bathrobe and slippers one night after men knocked on the door of...more

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Nov 05, 2011 Pia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I visited Pearl Harbor for the first time last month and it touched me to tears. Originally, I'd planned on being there for an hour or two, but I couldn't help but choose another ticket to the USS Missouri, where I wandered the ship with my audio guide, running my hands over the gunwales and lingering for what seemed like hours at the very spot where the surrender and peace treaty for World War II had been signed. When I was younger, I read Farewell to Manzanar, a young girl's account of being i...more

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About Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. After studying art as an undergraduate at Yale University she pursued a career as a painter for several years before turning to fiction writing at age 30. She received her MFA from Columbia. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Asian American Literary Award, and the American Library Association Alex Award.

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“And if anyone asks, you're Chinese. The boy had nodded. "Chinese," he whispered. "I'm Chinese." "And I," said the girl, "am the Queen of Spain." "In your dreams," said the boy. "In my dreams," said the girl, "I'm the King.” — 12 people liked it

“Mostly though, they waited. For the mail. For the news. For the bells. For breakfast and lunch and dinner. For one day to be over and the next day to begin.” — 9 people liked it

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