Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

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Being on the” immoral” side of a war is never good. But getting grouped with the wrong side solely for race is worse. In When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, this is what happens to Japanese Americans on the West Coast. The novel follows a family and details how they deal with internment and their return to life afterward. The message Otsuka pushes is how the trauma of imprisonment and isolation in society causes not only racism but internalized racism, even those on the “winning” side. From a young age, the children in the novel are led to believe that they are the enemies. Shortly after arriving at the internment camp, the boy joins in a game of “Kill the Nazis! Kill the J***. 54. The syllable of the syllable. There are two elements …show more content…
With the tension rising in the United States during the war, it became unsafe to be Japanese, so the family had to try to hide their identity. The day after the father was taken away, the mom burned all of her belongings that had any relation to Japan. Then, as Otsuka tells us, “she sent the boy and his sister to school with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their lunch pails. No more rice balls, she said. “And if anyone asks, you’re Chinese” (76). By not allowing them to eat rice balls for lunch and instead opting for a traditional American meal, the mother hopes to separate them from their Japanese culture. She also does this by plainly telling them to say they are Chinese and to abandon their own identity completely. The mom tells the kids these things in the hope that they will not be harassed or bullied for their identities because she is scared something will happen to them. Additionally, she is also ashamed to present as Japanese, and internalized shame is a major part of internalized

Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

Philip Holland Dr. Aigbedion Third Form English May 29, 2024 Tone as a Window Into Experience Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine chronicles the experience of a nameless Japanese-American family as they are abruptly uprooted from their comfortable life on the west coast and sent to an internment camp in the desert. This ordeal forces upon them a very different existence; they lose all form of control over their lives in the miserable camp where, treated like prisoners, the mood of the novel…

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Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

and went home and began to pack”(Otsuka 3). The family was being sent away but the reason was one thing and one thing only: Race. When society lives in fear, a single group of people are excluded and feared. Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine is a heartfelt book about the racism the Japanese Americans experienced after the Pearl Harbor attacks of 1941. The family must survive in the horrific internment camps without their father, who was unjustly taken from them for being Japanese. They must…

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Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

What Life Once Was: The American Dream is something that millions of people from every country try their whole lives to obtain. Although they all work very hard, plenty of them still are not able to acquire such a life. The struggles that the family is going through are never ending. In Julie Otsuka’s “ When the Emperor was Divine”, the family faces continual hardships. They start with living the American Dream, then they are sent into the internment camps which creates much of their problems through…

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Analysis Of Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

This is a book report about the novel When the Emperor Was Divine written by Julie Otsuka. When the Emperor Was Divine is a short novel about a Japanese-American family that goes to the internment camps during World War Two. It is told from a mostly omniscient point of view and provides a descriptive narrative on the lives of the nameless mother, son, daughter, and father. The namelessness of the characters provides a lot to the novel. Despite the family's citizenship, they are still nobody to the…

Words 950 - Pages 4

Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

they were released, they could never go back to the life they once had. When the Emperor was Divine, written by Julie Otsuka, tells the tale of a family that was forced to live in one of these internment camps for years. This book shows the struggles and changes that both the children and parents faced, trying to survive in a country that was once their own, but has now labeled them “enemy aliens”. When the Emperor was Divine illustrates how xenophobia can poison society, destroying people’s lives…

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Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

Nameless invasion Julie Otsuka examines how fear can cause people to alter their identities in her book When the Emperor was Divine. People alter as a result of fear because they may not be able to withstand the strain and stress. The family in the WWII set book is divided from one another. The novel tells the story of a Japanese American family’s ordeal in internment camps during World War Two. The father is arrested by the FBI because he is suspected of being a spy. The mother has to take care…

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Examples Of Injustice In Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

completely innocent and were blamed by association. The family in When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka illustrated how injustice can change people for good or for bad. The internment camps had a huge effect on the sister changing her into a negative person. In the beginning of the book, the sister was an excellent student who obeyed her mother’s request.They were running their daily routine on the day before they had to move. However, when she returned home from school she realized,…

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The Role Of Japanese-Americans In Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

In “When the Emperor was Divine”, by Julie Otsuka, the story describes at one point how Japanese-Americans were treated unfairly and harshly in many ways by the people who ran the camp. To begin with, numerous Japanese-Americans were forced to be sent into these deserted and dusty camps where they need to follow certain rules and guidelines. The rules mainly stated what Japanese-Americans weren’t allowed to do, like for example they couldn’t read books that were in Japanese nor could they have any…

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When The Emperor Was Divine By Julie Otsuka

in the country with their families for the sole crime of being Japanese. In Julie Otsuka’s novel When the Emperor was Divine, she writes about a Japanese American family forced to live in an internment camp after the events of Pearl Harbor. The FBI takes their father to a dangerous alien camp and separates him from his family. After the war ends, they are released but can never fully go back to normal. The family in Otsuka’s novel experiences guilt over Pearl Harbor and the war; despite not doing anything…

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