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| on kitchen window looking north |
I think by now we’ve all read about this shameful part of our past, when we crossed oceans to stop the Axis nations from interning (and killing) people in concentration camps whilst at the same time interning our own people. I would’ve liked to have been a fly on the wall when that decision was made:
--We’re fighting the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese. Shall we put all the American citizens whose family originates from those countries in camps?
--Er…well, most Americans are probably a bit German and there are loads of Italians too. Besides you can’t easily tell them apart. But we could go ahead and round up all the Japanese-Americans. They look different so are easier to spot and well, we’re all a bunch of racists, so they’ll need ‘protecting’ during the war.
Was that what happened? I can’t fathom such a discussion, but then again at present we have prisons where we ‘temporarily’ throw illegal immigrants into, people whose only crime was to enter the US illegally and who have otherwise been model citizens. So maybe we shouldn’t feel so superior in comparison with our WWII compatriots.
When the Emperor was Divine is a fictional account of what this historic event actually meant for individual people. I think it should be made required reading in classes dealing with WWII and the US’s involvement. So that we don’t assume that ‘we’ were the good guys without a fault to our name.
It breaks your heart almost from page one, when the family, who by now has been reduced by one – the father/husband has already been arrested and sent to a camp – has been informed that they must pack and leave to unknown destinations. The mother goes about buying little household implements, seemingly innocent ones but which very soon are discovered to have tragic purposes.
The reduced family - mother, daughter and son - have to be rid of their pets and pack only essentials like clothing, pots and pans and linens. How do you go about packing up your entire life in order to go off to prison? The pets are what got to me the most:
“She stroked the underside of his chin and he closed his eyes. “Silly bird,” she whispered. She closed the window and locked it. Now the bird was outside on the other side of the glass. He tapped the pane three times with his claw and said something but she did not know what it was. She could not hear him anymore.” pp.19-20
This is something that had truly never occurred to me. What happens to one’s animals when a family is forced to flee or is imprisoned? Having watched my share of footage of WWII deportations, I was always so immersed in the terror of what was happening to the people that their animals’ fates never occurred to me. This story truly brings to light the additional horror of displaced, lost, abandoned, killed animals. A pet parrot now forced to fend for itself, a loyal dog made to disappear…
But this was only the beginning.
Once at the camp, which although not a Nazi-run nightmare, is horrific nonetheless, the boy wonders if he’s to blame for their fate:
“…Something he’d done yesterday – chewing the eraser off his sister’s pencil before putting it back in the pencil jar – or something he’d done a long time ago that was just now catching up with him. Breaking a chain letter from Juneau, Alaska. (…) Forgetting to touch the hat rack three times when the iceman drove by.” p.57
The years pass, monotonously by, sometimes with letters from their father, sometimes not. They wonder if their friends think about them and wonder where they’ve gone. And then finally one day the war ends and they can return to their home. But well, you can never go home again, can you?
This is a wonderful book with touches of detail that place the reader right there in the barracks with them. I truly can’t wait to read another work by Ms. Otsuka.
P.S.If you’re an animal lover, be aware that there’ll be a very difficult scene early on, but it’s a thoroughly necessary one.
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