طی جنگ جهانی دوم و بعد از حمله‌ی امپراطوری ژاپن به پرل هاربر در آمریکا در سال ۱۹۴۱، روابط بین دو کشور که تا قبل از اون هم تعریف چندانی نداشت عملاً وارد فاز جنگ شد. بعد از این حمله، دولت آمریکا به ریاست روزولت «انتقام» از ژاپنی‌ها رو موضع خودش اعلام کرد و رسماً درگیر جنگ جهانی دوم شد. این انتقام در نهایت فقط به میدان اصلی جنگ (بمباران اتمی هیروشیما و ناکازاکی) محدود نشد. در جریان این اتفاقات، عده زیادی از مهاجرین ژاپنی یا شهروندان ژاپنی‌تباری که در آمریکا حضور داشتند به جاسوسی متهم یا اسیر شدند. تقریباً همه‌ی اون‌ها به اردوگاه‌ها فرستاده یا برخی دیپورت شدند و مجبور شدند به ژاپن برگردند. آتش این انتقام حتی پس از جنگ هم ژاپنی‌ها رو رها نکرد. «امپراطور هراس» داستان یک خانواده‌ی ژاپنی در آمریکا طی جنگ جهانی دوم و پس از اونه. روایتی تکراری از رنج‌ انسان‌های بی‌گناهی که تاوان گناهان سیاست‌مداران رو با زندگی‌شون می‌پردازند.

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, and there are only four chapters, each focusing on a different family member.

You never find out their names, which made it a little hard to get attached to the characters. And it's a story where you want to get attached to the people. On the other hand, the Japanese sadly became nameless, faceless "enemies" of the war and the book really shows how they were not treated like humans. And that their story could fit with any Japanese family.

3.5 ⭐rounded up to 4 ⭐

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka was a(nother) hauntingly sad story about the experience of Japanese Americans who were interned in detention camps during World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Told in heart-wrenching detail through the eyes of an 'ordinary' Japanese American family from San Francisco, who were forcibly relocated and incarcerated in an internment camp in the southwestern US, Otsuka succeeds in capturing the bewilderment, suffering and desolation of internment. Despite feeling 'American' in cultural habits and social norms like playing baseball and drinking coca cola, they were unjustly treated as traitors to the nation and relegated to being outcasts on the fringes of American society.

When the Emperor Was Divine is the second book I have read from Otsuka. The first, The Buddha in the Attic, was also partly focused on Japanese Internment during WWII. I found it gripping and emotionally charged due to Otsuka's stunning ability to blend the collective stories of multiple people into a single seamless narrative. In the case of When the Emperor Was Divine this finesse in her writing was less present. The story did not linger with me in the way that The Buddha in the Attic did. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend this one to anyone.

What I appreciated most of all about When the Emperor Was Divine, apart from Otsuka's skillful writing, were the historical facts underpinning the story. It was clear that the author had thoroughly researched this topic, even down to the minutest of details. For instance, one surprising fact that I learned through this story was that thousands of people were exchanged between Japan and the US during the war, using a ship called the USS Gripsholm.

I finished reading When the Emperor Was Divine a couple of days ago, and I was at a loss for words for my review. Everything that I noticed, felt, and appreciated about the denseness of this sparse little book was neatly encapsulated in the synopsis of this edition. Check it out if you haven't already.

Anyway, part of my goals this year is to review every single book I read, and so OCD got the better of me, and here I am now. How can I sum up this book without being redundant? Simply this: this is a book that needs to be read at some point in your life. It's a part of "silent" history, because as of today we have yet know all the different ways Japanaese American families were affected during this pivotal time of American history. Life didn't just resume like it had before. People were changed. Familes were displaced. Belongings were lost. Spirits were broken.

Even though this was Otsuka's debut novel, I'm glad I read her follow-up first. In retrospect, The Buddah in the Attic almost seems like a prequel. Either way, you can't go wrong with either one of these books. They're short novellas, and for a somewhat slow reader, I was able to finish both in one to two sittings. Check them out if you get a chance!

When the Emperor Was Divine is the slim, but powerful, debut novel by Julie Otsuka set during World War II.

About the book: “From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic, this commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese American incarceration camps that is both a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and a resonant lesson for our times.”

Spread over five chapters and with spare, precise, but evocative writing, When the Emperor was Divine takes place in Utah in a Japanese internment/incarceration camp. The spare storytelling gives it a literary feel and room to savor its subtlety. The settings are rich and come to life through all the senses.

Subtle writing that brings all the emotion in a way that seems effortless is my absolute favorite. My dad always told me it’s more challenging to write this way. Extra wordiness of which I’m guilty is easier. Less is more. It’s also highly readable, and this topic is emotional and heartrending. If you enjoy stories told in this style, don’t miss it.

Otsuka has a new book out called The Swimmers, and I cannot wait to read and savor my time spent with it, too.

I received a gifted copy.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

With already so many wonderful reviews -- I'm going to just add one quote I thought about (something Jewish people often think about)

"You can't remember everything", she said.
"And even if you can you shouldn't", said the girl
"I wouldn't say that", said her mother
"You didn't", said the girl

note: Sometimes ....you find yourself reading a novel --its taking a lot of your concentration -- then you see a Goodreads friend post a beautiful review of a book you 'must' read....(you might even own it, which was the case with me) ....
You feel so inspired --moved -
So why wait?
I didn't any longer --

Very Powerful -- touching - devastating!

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 40 pages or so are a little more traditionally written and very interesting, if heartbreaking. This section deals with their return to California after 3 1/2 years in the camp, and their attempts to resume their old life.

If you also want to read a book with a little more concrete information about this subject, try Farewell to Manzanar. The writing is not as pretty, but it fills in the gaps. Heck, read both books. They're short.

This historical novel is both gorgeous and heartbreaking. It follows a Japanese-American family that is sent to an internment camp in the Utah desert during World War II. The story follows the family as they get the news of the forced relocation, the trip to the camp, how they lived in the barracks, and finally, after more than three years of incarceration, their return home. I appreciated this novel because the Japanese internment is a dark chapter of U.S. history, and one that seems overlooked in school textbooks.

Otsuka's writing is beautiful, and her prose is so lyrical that at times it feels poetic. I had read her other novel The Buddha in the Attic, which follows a group of Japanese women immigrating to America, and it is also gorgeous and heartbreaking. I highly recommend both of these novels to anyone interested in the perspective of Japanese-Americans.

Favorite Quote
"We used to live in the desert. We used to wake, every morning, to the blast of a siren. We used to stand in line for our meals three times a day. We used to stand in line for our mail. We used to stand in line to get coal. We used to stand in line whenever we had to shower or use the latrine. We used to hear the wind hissing day and night through the sagebrush. We used to hear coyotes. We used to hear every word spoken by our neighbors on the other side of the thin barrack wall ... We used to try and imagine what it would be like when we finally returned home."

As I was pondering what to write about this slim, impressionistic book about America's internment of Japanese, including citizens, the leading candidate for one of the two major parties in the United States praised that painful and wrong-headed moment in our history. It is astonishing to me that anyone can think it acceptable for the national government to take any action on the basis of race or religion, and Julie Otsuka's book is a primer, not just on the venality but on the ineffectiveness of such projects. First is the wreckage suffered by a whole group, loss of job, family, opportunity, possessions. Second, is the disrespect--it is worth noting that a Japanese American unit was the most decorated, controlling for length of service and size, of any American military group in history; among its many accomplishments was saving the Lost Brigade surrounded by Germans. (Lest anyone think that the analogy to the current debate breaks down here, I have volunteered in refugee services, where I met Iraqis who lost their homes and their homeland and even saw members of their families murdered, all because they helped the American cause in their country). Then there is the loss to the nation, because of so many whose contribution was forfeited (though, Otsuka argues, individual Americans profited by seizing property from the absent Japanese). All of this Otsuka makes powerfully human not through a conventional narration, but through skillfully interwoven stories of nameless but individualized characters. Perhaps the most devastating part is the ending, a confession to all the national security offenses of which the Japanese were accused but that in fact none of them even thought of doing.

n  “But we never stopped believing that somewhere out there, in some stranger’s backyard, our mother’s rosebush was blossoming madly, wildly, pressing one perfect red flower after another out into the late afternoon light.”n

It's easy to make a story like this melodramatic, moralistic, overwrought with feelings. A less skilled writer would have done it. A story of an unnamed Japanese-American family banished from their quiet life in Berkeley to spend over three years in an internment camp for a simple "crime" of being Japanese in the US during World War II is, after all, a story that comes with built-in pathos and anger - a collision of emotions that in the right hands can deliver a perfect punch.

n  “Keep your head down and don’t cause any trouble, we’d been told, weeks before, in a mess hall lecture on “How to Behave in the Outside World.” Speak only English. Do not walk down the street in groups of more than three, or gather in restaurants in groups of more than five. Do not draw attention to yourselves in any way.”n

But Julie Otsuka does not take the easy and obvious path. She stays away from the obvious heartstrings-tugging a lesser writer could have settled for. Instead, she delivers a subtle but remarkably powerful story; a crisp and precise and yet muted and subdued, understated and somewhat detached narrative with nevertheless a documentary camera lens-like clarity. She does not tell but shows, letting us experience and make our own conclusions through the eyes of the family members - the mother, the girl, the boy, then the combined "we" of the children's perspectives, finally ending on the shortest and the most charged viewpoint of the father. The tragedy of the casual crime of the country against some of its citizens carries a heavy weight. But still, the conclusions are left to be your own.

n  “They had all seen us leave, at the beginning of the war, had peered out through their curtains as we walked down the street with our enormous overstuffed suitcases. But none of them came out, that morning, to wish us goodbye, or good luck, or ask us where it was we were going (we didn’t know). None of them waved.”n

The powerful parts for me were not the internment chapters but the return - back to the 'normal' world, into the lives forcibly left behind years ago, without an acknowledgement of the wrongness done but instead with a measly payout equal to those released criminals get, expected to act like nothing had happened but to cautiously "behave", accept the injustice as necessity and move on, blend in, not make any waves, pretending that they don't know who used to own the bits of life pilfered by your own neighbors. And eventually you may learn to accept the belief that somehow you must have been at fault - otherwise how can it all make sense?

n  “We looked at ourselves in the mirror and did not like what we saw: black hair, yellow skin, slanted eyes. The cruel face of the enemy.
We were guilty.”n

It's a short book, and every page in it is essential; there's no filler, only the bits that are necessary to build the intricate picture of the events that should provoke anger but - since there's little choice for those swept away by them - have to be met with resignation and attempts to preserve dignity while inevitably stripping away the bits of self that are found to be inconvenient for those wielding power.

It's a wonderful book.

n  “So go ahead and lock me up. Take my children. Take my wife. Freeze my assets. Seize my crops. Search my office. Ransack my house. Cancel my insurance. Auction off my business. Hand over my lease. Assign me a number. Inform me of my crime. Too short, too dark, too ugly, too proud. Put it down in writing—is nervous in conversation, always laughs loudly at the wrong time, never laughs at all—and I’ll sign on the dotted line. Is treacherous and cunning, is ruthless, is cruel. And if they ask you someday what it was I most wanted to say, please tell them, if you would, it was this:
I’m sorry.
There. That’s it. I’ve said it. Now can I go?”n

Ha egy nemzet nyomorultul érzi magát, akkor első dolga keresni egy közösséget, akit még magánál is nyomorultabbá tehet. Attól valahogy megnyugszik. Ez történt az USA japán kisebbségével is, akit az amerikai kormány ún. "nemzetbiztonsági okokból" a kontinens közepén terpeszkedő sivatagokba deportált, alkalmazva rájuk a kollektív bűnösség elvét. Mintha a 70 éves eperkertészek és unokáik másra sem vágytak volna, mint hogy jeleket adjanak Hirohito tengeralattjáróinak Kalifornia partjainál. Otsuka regénye az ő történetüket beszéli el érzékeny, de minden harsányságtól mentes eszközökkel.

Ezt a könyvet könnyebb azon keresztül leírni, ami nincs benne, mint azon keresztül, ami van. Nincsenek például benne látható gonoszok - azok az amerikaiak, akikkel a szereplők találkoznak, inkább jóindulatúak vagy semlegesek. Az ártó szándék képviselői jobbára láthatatlanok: egy távoli kéz, aki aláír egy rendeletet, névtelen cenzorok, akik kihúznak egy ártatlan mondatot, sötétben lendülő karok, akik téglát hajítanak be az ablakon, ismeretlen szomszédok, akik a lakók távollétében ellopják azok holmiját. Azonban ez nem könnyíti meg a deportáltak helyzetét, sőt: azzal, hogy a rossznak nincs arca, egyszeriben megfoghatatlanná és legyőzhetetlenné válik.

Hiányoznak továbbá ebből a regényből a drámai szenvedés képei. Mégpedig azért, mert ezekkel az emberekkel nem pusztán az történt, hogy megalázták és megkínozták őket. Hanem kiragadták őket abból az életből, amit kibrusztoltak maguknak, és belehajították egy teljesen ismeretlen létezésbe. A talajt tépték ki alóluk, és hagyták, hogy a semmiben lebegjenek. A bizonytalanság, vagy - Kertész szavával - a "sorstalanság" állapotába lettek belevetve: megtagadják tőlük, hogy amerikaiakká válhassanak, de megbüntetik őket, ha japánok maradnak. De ha se egyik, se másik, akkor mi marad? Így csinál az állam valakiből senkit.

Powerful, disturbing, and thought provoking. Julie Otsuka's debut novel, When the Emperor Was Divine focuses on the perspectives of a Japanese mother, father, son and daughter who are sent to internment camps after Pearl Harbor is bombed.

Each chapter is based on one person's perspective. The characters are unnamed and are referred to as mother, father, son and daughter. It feels jarring but it fits with not seeing or valuing people.

The book's narrative is in a distant third person except for the final chapter which is an intense, angry, sarcastic monologue by the father that describes his four years in captivity.

This short novel packs a punch.