Julie Otsuka - When the Emperor was Divine

Four months after Pearl Harbor, signs begin appearing up and down the West Coast instructing all persons of Japanese ancestry to report to 'assembly centers'. For one family - reclassified, virtually overnight, as unwelcome enemies - it is the beginning of a nightmare of oppression and alienation that will alter their lives forever.There is the mother, reeling from the order to 'evacuate', and the daughter, travelling on the long train journey away from freedom. There is the son, who struggles to adapt to their new life in the dust of the Utah desert, and the father, who, after four bitter years in captivity, returns to his family a stranger.Based on a true story, Julie Otsuka's powerful, deeply humane first novel tells of a forgotten generation who found themselves imprisoned in their own country, and evokes an unjustly overlooked episode in America's wartime history.

Comment: I'm not certain anymore why I've added this book to my TBR. This is a novella and I've added it in December 2024 so it might have been part of some best of list somewhere...

Life had been going as normal as it could when Pearl Harbour happened, and with that the existence of all people of Japanese origin in the US radically changes. There are signs telling them they need to travel to a specific place, for an undetermined period of time, and every adult understands what this means. A certain family follows the rules, a mother and her two sons, for the father is already detained somewhere, and they join the others in the long train journey and on the long stay in a camp in Utah. What they live through, what they feel while there are things that will never leave them.

I had an idea about the camps in the US where many American-Japanese citizens had been kept after 1942. I didn't know where exactly and for how long but it seems that if there is one thing we can count humankind to do is to be blind in regards to what it means to have morals. History did not teach us anything, after all, whether regarding what this books talks about or in regards to countless other examples in which a group of humans thinks they know best how to deal with other groups.

Sadly, the state of the world now only validates these "historical" novels and texts and proves that power and money do control the world and only a few manage to make the rules. How many world crimes would not have happened if only the greed of man were no more, but... 

This subject is never ending, so I will move on. This novella was quick but gave quite a punch. And, honestly, to me it wasn't so much about the situation in general, which is bad enough to think about, but the way the author wrote this based in real life facts/events. The apparently mundane, everyday routines of how the family leaves their house, coped with what happened and then returned to a life that was never the same impacted me in a much more powerful manner. Whoever else read this, the scene in which the mother "releases" the pets is.... God.

We are never given the characters' names but that, after all, is meant to not matter to those who make the rules. We follow these three in their travel and it is true that they stay there and have food and water but the psychology of what happens to them is a concept that we would spend a lifetime exploring and trying to explain. I both liked this - I do like to think about details - and disliked it because if one tries to place oneself in these people's shoes.... or anyone else somehow privy of their freedom...

The historical context should be enough to make this an easy book to understand but the real wonder is in the little things, the thoughts they have and how they all deal with what they must do and live through. While they stay at the camp, it seems as if everything is simple to follow, boring and pointless most of the time, unfair at others, and under all that who knows how many layers of feelings and sensations and thoughts that are impossible. No, this isn't a book where the author enumerates all possible things, but it does give food for thought.

After the despair and the obvious trauma of this situation, the family goes back home. Another trauma waiting because, of course, nothing can ever be the same. I bet there are many books published about this and about other returns, both from a social and a psychological POV, even if not centered on PTSD as it should, but it is impossible to avoid the fact that these people, like so many others nowadays, simply cannot be allowed to have a voice. Perhaps culture is also something to consider here, but... what stays with someone is not measurable, is it?

The fact this a novella made some things seem simplified and not even inferring made it easier. I also think maintaining the distance between the characters and the reader was good most of the time, but not always. I also would have wished for an end with a bit more of closure but I suppose this is only personal preference, since the way it does end gives that food for thought I've mentioned.

This left me thinking, that is a fact. So, I will investigate the author's other work.

Grade: 8/10