On another occasion, a team arrives and everyone is asked to answer a question "Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?" Those who answer "No" are moved to a camp for "disloyals," and a year later are repatriated to Japan by sea. (Exactly how this was achieved isn't made clear).
In addition to the memories of her relatives, the author has researched a number of works on the Japanese American Internment, listed at the end of the book.
Then, suddenly, the war's over and, after three years and five months, the family return home. They discover that they still own their house, and carry their dusty suitcases up the narrow gravel path. They never get any of the rent a lawyer had promised to collect for them when they left, and some of their rooms have been vandalized. But the children's classmates never invite them home, and no one in Berkeley asks them how it was. The mother finds work, with considerable difficulty, as a domestic cleaner.
Father finally returns too. Young and handsome when they last saw him, he's all but unrecognizable. He'd been assumed to be a dangerous enemy alien, and had been held, we're led to assume, in especially harsh conditions.
There's no question of him working, so he stays home all day, reading the newspapers with a magnifying glass, and writing words down in a blue notebook.
The book ends with a harrowing four-page fictional "confession." It's supposedly what the father was made to sign, but it actually encompasses just about every prejudice any Westerner has ever felt about any Japanese.
It begins "Everything you have heard is true," and ends, "I'm sorry."
This is an admirable book in every possible way. It may not have involved any great feat of imagination for Julie Otsuka to put it together, but reading it is nevertheless an unforgettable experience. And the last 20 or so pages are enormously poetic and moving.
When you've finished this book, it's impossible not to wonder to what extent history is repeating itself -- not in terms of internment on this scale, but as regards social ostracism of ethnic groups associated with perceived threats. Either way, whether you're considering the past or the present, When the Emperor was Divine makes for very sobering reading indeed.
RSS