There is something so unique and special about Otsuka’s book. They are unlike any other books I’ve ever read, mostly due to the perspectives she uses. I was never taught in school about Japanese internment camps and the atrocity it was. The racism rampant during this time was heartbreaking to read about in this book. I found the characters in this story to be so strong and even when they had seemed to have lost hope, they continued onwards. It’s truly horrifying that this is a part of our history but needs to be talked about more so we don’t repeat mistakes from the past. I will read anything and everything by this incredible author!

if you're not well knowledged in history, you'll enjoy this quick book on what it meant to be Japanese during the world war and it'll make you go back and do proper research on the intermittent camps build across America and Canada.

This novel stayed with me for months. The cruelty we human beings can inflict on each other merely because we look different or come from a different background is at the heart of this book. During WWII, a Japanese American family living in Berkeley, California, is sent to an internment camp in the Utah desert (along with other California families). The father is separated from the family and sent to a harsher place. Each family member feels the impact differently and chronicles the experience in her/his own chapter of the novel. In some ways, it's harder for the family to come back to their home after the war, having to face neighbors whom they previously regarded as friends but who turned their backs on the family once they were labeled as the "foreign enemy." This important novel gives us a lot to think about since this kind of forced separation could happen again--and does happen to a certain extent every time we perceive a terrorist threat against our country.

امپراطور هراس داستانی در مورد یک خانواده ی ژاپنیه که در زمان حمله پرل هاربر (حمله ژاپن به پایگاه دریایی آمریکا در جنگ جهانی دوم) در آمریکا زندگی میکنند و این حمله و جنگ روی زندگی اونها تاثیرات زیادی داره مثل بقیه ی ژاپنی های حاضر در آمریکا
داستان خیلی روان و ساده نوشته شده و شما رو با خودش همراه میکنه

جنگ فقط بین سربازان و فقط در بحبوحه جنگ نیست. جنگ حتی تا مدت ها پس از پایان، زندگی هزاران مرد و زن و کودک را تحت تاثیر خود قرار خواهد داد

I heard the silent scream throughout the book. The blankness was everywhere.
Julie Otsuka writes beautifully, painfully about the Japanese-Americans who were put in camps after Pearl Harbor; an episode in American history and war history that tends to be overlooked or forgotten.

Egentligen så var det en annan bok av den här författaren som fanns på min önskelista, men När kejsaren var gudomlig var den som fanns på bokrean. Egentligen så är det väl lämpligt att börja med denna, eftersom det är hennes debut. Även om förlagen översatte dem i fel ordning. Jag har i vilket fall hört oerhört mycket om alla hennes böcker och det är inte helt omöjligt att det blir fler.

Tydligen så ska historien bygga på Otsukas egen familj och det som hände dem. Denna förfärliga tid i människans historia. Helt urskillningslöst skickades samtliga amerikaner med japanskt ursprung till läger för internering. Ett väldigt bra sätt att skaffa sig fiender på. Vilket å andra sidan även bombning av ett land som man inte är i krig med är. Andra världskriget tog verkligen fram det allra sämsta ur människan. Lite som nu. Om man betraktas som fienden, av ett helt land, då är det lätt att man blir just det.

Jag önskar verkligen att jag kunde säga att det som händer i När kejsaren var gudomlig aldrig skulle kunna hända igen. Just interneringen har jag lite svårare att se skulle ske i dag, i en demokrati, men hatet mot en helt folkgrupp består dock. Det är bara folkgruppen som skiftar.

OBS! Detta är en kraftigt förkortad text. Hela finns på min blogg

A series of interlinked short stories outlining the internment of Japanese Americans in world war two. Interesting spotlight on an arcane corner of history, with a powerful sense of the injustice and shame of it all

Es fing okay an und hörte auch okay auf, aber dazwischen liegt ein sehr öder Mittelteil. Dieser Mittelteil handelt von mehreren Jahren, in denen auch im Leben der Romanfiguren nur Tumbleweed vorbeirollt, also mag die Langeweile Absicht sein, aber wenn das Buch nicht sehr kurz wäre, hätte ich das nicht durchgestanden.

First I want to thank the publisher for sending me a lovely finished copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. It arrived today and I finished it a couple hours later.

When the Emperor Was Divine is a short volume is written in the POV of a Japanese American child who is sent to live in a Japanese intenment camp with his sibling and mother, while his father was taken elsewhere. The narrative is traditional and occurs in chronological order, but the intimacy of the story coming from this boy is uniquely insightful.

At the time of Pearl Harbor our protagonist is only eight years old. Not long after he watches as the FBI drags the boy from their home in the middle of the night. While his father is taken to New Mexico and treated like a spy, the rest of the family is sent to a camp in Utah. The descriptions of their journey by train were so very real. We see as the boy deals with the feelings of sadness after leaving behind his friends and dog, and his worry for his father. For three and a half years they live behind barbed wire. But it is the final chapter that most moved me. We see what their lives are like after returning home. We see the overt racism that will plague them for years or decades. This section of the book made me cry. This is a chapter of my country's history that is shameful and shocking.

The book is beautiful.

When the Emperor Was Divine is a short but powerful novel of a bad decision made during wartime when the United States interred its Japanese residents and citizens. Like a letter from that past that comes from a friend or relative, it is impossible to put this intense book down. Its powerful opening starts with the mother as she packs up her house and then walks outside and puts down the old family dog and buries it in the yard. Too old to go to anyone and impossible to be left alone, she makes a horrible decision that foreshadows hardships to come.

The matter of fact tone of the novel adds to the starkness and despair that envelops this family for the next three and one-half years. Separated from her husband who has been sent to an Aliens camp, the mother and her boy and girl are sent to a relocation camp in Utah. We never know any of their names. They are generic. The descriptions of the camp are woven together with the psychological effect it is having on each member of the family. But the most powerful emotional impact is made in the last chapter when the family returns home, is reunited at last and most make its peace with what happened among the friends and neighbors that allowed it to happen.

Molto bello! Scrittura essenziale ma efficace! Una famiglia giapponese benestante che per colpa della guerra alla fine si trova ad essere ospite a casa sua.
La madre dei due bambini è molto forte, si adatta a tutto quello che succede, cerca di fare vivere al meglio i figli e comunque mantiene la sua dignità. Molto molto bello!

This is listed as adult fiction, but feels much more like Young Adult material.

The book tells the story through different points of view in each chapter, but the audiobook has no chapter divisions. So we shift views often, and recount events, which feels like jumping around chronologically. The feel is very disjointed.

The book is full of symbolism. It describes the everyday lives and how that changes for a family of Japanese descent living in America during WWII. The language is both poetic and close to boring.

One thing the book does well is create a sense of ambiguity, an us vs them mentality, where being on 'the right side' means you must learn to hate yourself. A deeply psychological thing.

There is also a longing for the old days while the family is in an internment camp. But getting home is not as fulfilling as they imagined, and the thickness of trauma, even after the situation is resolved, is explored as a theme.

While the book made you Feel what interned Japanese families must have, the over-symbolism was weighty at times, and other times make you slog through the book. Still, it communicates a horror that is terrifying only in its inaction, the noisy stillness of a desert.