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.
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