When the Emperor Was DivineFrom the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and The Swimmers, 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. 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 incarceration 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. |
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asked barracks began beneath bird blue boy's brought closed her eyes dark desert door dreams dress dust Electrolux EMPEROR WAS DIVINE everything face father fence fingers floor Fort Sam Houston front girl glass gone hair hand head hear heard Hirohito horse horse meat inside Joe Palooka Julie Otsuka Kagoshima kitchen knew looked Lordsburg mess hall morning mother mouth never night once Pearl Harbor picked pulled radio remember Saipan scarf scrabbling Seth Hall shade shoes shouted shovel side sister sleep slept slippers slowly smell smiled softly Sometimes sound stared stood stopped street suitcase Tanforan tell things told took tossed train trees turned walked wall wanted War Relocation Authority watched wearing whispered White Dog wind window woman wooden wore yard yellow