History’s Unheard Voices

The Second World War, without a doubt, is singly one of the most seminal, if not the most devastating events in recent history. It has altered and shaped the landscape of modern times, not only in Europe where it originated but across the world. Global cities like London, Tokyo, Warsaw, and Kyiv were leveled or severely damaged. Vestiges of the war also riddle various parts of the world. They are akin to open scars that do not fully heal even with time. The toll on human lives was equally extensive as not only soldiers perished but also civilians who were caught in the crossfire. Because of the incompleteness of records, casualty estimates vary, with some suggesting as high as 60 million casualties. However, the war’s damage was not limited to the physical. The war has left scars psychological and emotional scars so deep that reparation and subsequent compensation will never suffice.

The war also exposed the darker side of humanity. It showed our propensity not only for destruction but also the prejudices we hold against our fellows, as shown in Führer’s oppression of the Jews in a campaign of purging widely referred to as the Holocaust. Hitler’s campaign extended beyond Jews as he also purged gypsies, political enemies, and even entire ethnic groups such as the Slavs. But while the war was raging worldwide, the Allied forces also instituted measures to mitigate risks posed by the Axis forces. In the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. The decree forced people of Japanese descent living in the United States to be relocated and incarcerated in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). This is in retaliation to the outbreak of war with the Empire of Japan in December 1941. It was a precautionary measure to mitigate the security risk believed to be posed by Japanese Americans. The American government believed that Japanese living in America would side with the Japanese.

It is, unfortunately, a section of contemporary war history that is often muted, even in the ambit of Second World War literature. Nevertheless, there are writers who, through the power of pen, shed light on this section of history. Among them is Japanese American painter and writer and painter Julie Otsuka whose debut novel, When the Emperor Was Divine (2002), transports the readers to this horrid landscape. When the Emperor was Divine commences in Berkeley, California – most of the interned Japanese Americans were from the interiors of the West Coast – where, on a spring day in 1942, the anonymous main character – she would simply be referred to as the woman – reads a sign in the post office. The sign informs the public of Evacuation Order 19; the sign was posted all over the town. The order was clear: everyone with Japanese ancestry living in the city would be evacuated in the next couple of weeks.

The girl looked out the window and saw hundreds of tar-paper barracks sitting beneath the hot sun. She saw telephone poles and barbed-wire fences. She saw soldiers. And everything she saw she saw through a cloud of fine white dust that had once been the bed of an ancient salt lake. The boy began to cough and the girl untied her scarf and shoved it into his hand and told him to hold it over his nose and mouth. He pressed the scarf to his face and took the girl’s hand and together they stepped out of the bus and into the blinding white glare of the desert.

Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine

The sign prompts the woman into action. Despite being cognizant of the veiled oppression against them, the woman/mother remained calm and collected. After reading the announcement, the woman returned home to prepare for what the future has in store for her and her two preadolescent children; they were simply referred to as the girl and the boy. While her children were at school, the woman packed up their belongings. When her children returned home from school, she told her children to prepare for departure to the internment camp. The woman also killed the stray dog they were looking after and released their pet bird. Meanwhile, the American government through the Federal Bureau of Investigation detained her husband and the children’s father last December under the suspicion of being an alien enemy. He was forcefully incarcerated and is under intense interrogation.

After two weeks of preparation, the family of three was finally evacuated to the camps. Their packed belongings, however, ended up in storage; they were advised to bring only clothes and bedding. From her mother’s perspective, the story’s perspective switches to the eleven-year-old girl’s point of view in the second chapter, Trains; the girl was aware of what the evacuation was for even before she was informed by her mother. This chapter charts the family’s transfer from their first barracks in  California to the second camp in Utah where they would stay for the rest of the story. The entire train was commissioned to transport people of Japanese ancestry like the main characters. The train was armed with guards who accompanied them during the journey. The girl narrates the long train journey across the desert. She was bored but the train’s constant movement made her feel sick. She also spent time observing her surroundings and the other passengers of the train.

The train’s final destination was the internment camp called Topaz. Surrounded by barbed-wire fences, the camp was a no-man’s land in the middle of the desert. Tar-paper barracks were lined up in a dried-up salt lake. Upon their arrival, the first thing the characters noticed was the unbearable heat and dust. The mother and her children were designated a small room. With the third chapter also came another pivot in perspective. Taking the helm was the eight-year-old son. Missing his father, he sees his father’s face in every adult male he encounters in the camp; to him, they all look alike. His mind was also playing tricks with him as he conjured images of his father visiting them in the camp. His perspective provides a layer of puerility and innocence. He had a hard time understanding their situation and even believed that it was due to something he had done. It was also through his childlike perspective that Otsuka captured the details of life in the camp.

Stringent rules were enforced in the camp. For one, no one is allowed to touch or even get too close to the fence. Dire, even fatal consequences follow those who refuse to conform. A man who was supposedly trying to escape was shot dead although other prisoners claimed he was only trying to pluck a flower. Despite the danger and his mother’s admonitions, the boy made it a habit of walking parallel to the fence while, as a precaution, looking at the guard towers. The harsh conditions the prisoners had to endure in the desert also did not escape the boy’s keen attention. The other prisoners, on the other hand, spent their days waiting. They were all divided, with no prominent voice to lead them. This division also extended to the family of three. With his sister no longer spending time with him, the boy felt more alone. Their mother, on the other hand, spends her days in torpor, drowned in memories of her life in Japan.

The dark bodies of the horses were drifting and turning in the moonlight and wherever they went they left behind great billowing clouds of dust as proof their passage. The girl lifted the shade and pulled her brother to the window and pressed his face gently to the glass and when he saw the mustangs…he let out a low moan that sounded like a cry of pain but was not. 

Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine

Despite its slender appearance, When the Emperor Was Divine extensively tackles and exposes a major fault line in contemporary history, a seminal subject related to the relations between the United States and Japan. Unfortunately, it is a subject rarely explored in the ambit of literature, even within Second World War literature. Executive Order 9066 is rarely discussed vis-à-vis the Second World War, at least not to the same extent that the Holocaust or even just the sensitive subject of comfort women are discussed. Otsuka’s debut novel reminds us of the several voices that have been muted or forgotten by history. After all, it is the victor who often gets to write history. The novel is also a reminder that there are several sections of history and of the world that are obscured from the naked eye of the common individual.

In crafting her debut novel, Otsuka drew inspiration from her family’s history. Otsuka’s father was an issei or a first-generation migrant while her mother was a nisei or a second-generation migrant. In light of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Otsuka’s grandfather was arrested by the FBI under the suspicion of being a spy for Japan. Meanwhile, her mother, uncle, and grandmother spent three years in a prison camp in Topaz, Utah. It stands to reason why the members of the Japanese family at the heart of the short novel were unnamed, simply referred to as Mother, Daughter, Son, and Father. On the other hand, this namelessness gave the story a more universal appeal. The family’s experiences reflect the experiences of their fellow Japanese Americans who found themselves incarcerated during the escalation of the Second World War. The subtle indictment of Japanese Americans during the war strangely mirrors the treatment of Asian Americans during the COVID-19 outbreak. The present, after all, is an echo of the past.

Otsuka vividly captured the oppression and discrimination that the Japanese Americans experienced during the Second World War; a majority of those who were forcefully incarcerated as a result of Executive Order 9066 were already American citizens. The family at the heart of the story had first-hand experience of these discriminations. Even when they were not yet in the internment camps, they were treated as enemies following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Some of them were refused purchase at the local stores and shops they frequented. Strictures at Topaz limited their mobility. When some of the prisoners were taken to work as farmers during the autumn, they experienced harsh treatment and abuse from the American farmers. Upon return to the camp, they said they would never go back to work again. Every action of the prisoners was monitored. While the family received a letter from the father, portions of the letters were shaded black or unreadable.

The Second World War has certainly exposed the darker sides of humanity. It was evident in the level and the various layers of racism that pervaded the story. It persisted even after the war and when the family returned to their home after over three years of incarceration. They returned to a home that was in a state of utter disrepair. During their incarceration, the lawyer the family hired to look after the house rented it. Unfortunately, the lessees nearly destroyed the house, even stripping it off of its valuables. Nevertheless, the family tried to rebuild their lives and pick up from where they left off. However, anti-Japanese sentiments and discrimination persisted, especially after the American soldiers returned with horrific details of what they experienced during the Pacific Theater or Asia-Pacific War. When the daughter and son returned to school, the other children viewed them with suspicion. Further, no one wanted to hire the woman. The father also returns home but, like his family, he is a changed person.

Nothing’s changed, we said to ourselves. The war had been an interruption, nothing more. We would pick up our lives where we had left off and go on. We would go back to school again. We would study hard, every day, to make up for lost time. We would seek out old classmates…We would listen to their music. We would dress just like they did. We would change our names to sound more like theirs. And if our mother called out to us on the street by our real names we would turn away and pretend not to know her. We would never be mistaken for the enemy again!

Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine

Beyond racism and the stymying of independence, When the Emperor Was Divine also delves into the loss of identity as Japanese Americans assimilate into their new country. When the father was taken away by the FBI, the mother burned all vestiges and relics of their life in Japan., including letters from family, the Japanese flag, and the records of Japanese opera. Their circumstance was further exacerbated by their experiences at the camp and during the war. The discrimination, the oppression, and the blatant disregard of the Japanese American’s humanity were among the ironies of the pursuit of the American Dream. On the brighter side, the story underscored the strength we find in families. The story showed the lengths we go through to ensure our family’s safety. This was captured through the mother who, despite her husband being forcefully taken away, acted as a rock for her family. Even when she felt weak, she constantly reassured her children.

The winner of the Asian American Literary Award in 2003 and the American Library Association’s Alex Award, When the Emperor Was Divine is a compelling read. The experiences of the four main characters echoed the horrors that their fellow Japanese Americans experienced as the Second World War raged on. The American government’s persecution of the minority exposes the darker side of humanity, the side of us that allows prejudice and racism to thrive. The follies of the pursuit of the pursuit of the American Dream also rise to the fore. Isseis, niseis, sanseis, and their succeeding generations, have slowly lost their identity – their cultures, traditions, and systems of beliefs – as they integrate into their new environment only to be subjected to discrimination. With objective lenses, Otsuka provided the readers a vicarious experience in her debut novel. Deceptively slender, When the Emperor Was Divine is a lush novel that chronicles an unfamiliar historical territory, at least within the ambit of literature.

In the dream there was always a beautiful wooden door. The beautiful wooden door was very small – the size of a pillow, say, or an encyclopedia. Behind the small but beautiful wooden door there was a second door, and behind the second door there was a picture of the Emperor, which no one was allowed to see. For the Emperor was holy and divine. A god.

Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine
Book Specs

Author: Julie Otsuka
Publisher: Anchor Books
Publishing Date: October 2003
Number of Pages: 144
Genre: Historical, Literary

Synopsis

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 uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert.

In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today’s headlines.

About the Author

Julie Otsuka was born on May 15, 1962, in Palo Alto, California, United States to parents of Japanese descent. Her father was an aerospace engineer while her mother was a lab technician. When she was nine, her family moved to Palos Verdes, California. After high school, Otsuka attended Yale University where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in art in 1984. She completed her  Master of Fine Arts in 1999 at Columbia University. Before turning to writing, Otsuka pursued a career as a painter. She turned to writing after suffering a self-described “creative breakdown.”

In 2002, Otsuka made her literary debut with the publication of When the Emperor Was Divine. Warmly and critically received by pundits across the world, the novel won the 2003 Asian American Literary Award and the 2003 American Library Association Alex Award and was a finalist for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic (2011), was equally critically received. It earned Otsuka more accolades such as the PEN/Faulkner Award, France’s Prix Femina Étranger, the Albatros Literaturpreis, and the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction. The book was also a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Otsuka’s latest novel, The Swimmers, was published in 2022. It won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction in 2023.

Otsuka’s writing has also appeared in various publications such as the Granta, Harper’s, Newsweek, 100 Years of The Best American Short Stories, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, The Best American Short Stories 2012, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012. Otsuka is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Otsuka is currently residing in New York City.