Otsuka introduction

2. Background on Julie Otsuka’s novel,
When the Emperor Was Divine
Questions that guide my thinking today:
1. Why do we not know the story of our government’s unjust
incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II?
2. How might reading a fictionalized version of Julie Otsuko’s family’s
story of incarceration address that problem of our ignorance?
3. How to teach Otsuka’ novel, given our circumstances now, so that
our students feel it—and the deeper the better—so that we can
stop that injustice from being repeated.

3. Some numbers related to the Japanese American Incarceration
Up to 120,000 people of Japanese Ancestry were removed from their
homes on the West Coast following the implementation of Executive
Order 9066 signed on February 19, 1942 by President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.
2/3 of that population were American citizens.
Approximately 1000 leaders of West Coast Japanese communities,
legal residents, were arrested following the attack on Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941 and incarcerated at Fort Missoula and other
internment camps for enemy aliens.

4. A Map of “Assembly Centers,” “Relocation Centers,” and Other
Polite Names for American Concentration Camps, 1942-1946

5. More Numbers
Medals earned in combat by the 100th Battalian/442nd Regimental Combat
Team, an all-Japanese unit, volunteers and draftees from the Camps, who
fought in Italy, France, and Germany during World War II:
9,486 Purple Hearts
8 Presidential Unit Citations
21 Medals of Honor
In a two-year period, 18,000 combat awards earned by the 100th/442nd

6. Questions 27 and 28 from the Leave Clearance Application Form,
better known as the “Loyalty Questionnaire”
(see page 99 of When the Emperor was Divine)
27. Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on
combat duty, wherever ordered?
28. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of
America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attack
by foreign or domestic forces, and foreswear any form of allegiance or
obedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government,
power, or organization?

7. Still More Numbers
Approximately 12,000 of the 78,000 men and women aged 17 or older in the
WRA camps who took the “Loyalty Questionnaire” either refused to answer
or gave qualified or partial answers and were sent to Tule Lake.
Approximately 300 of the draft age Nisei (second generation Japanese
Americans) , mostly from Poston and Heart Mountain, refused induction
when faced with the draft and were sent to prison.
They were known as “No No Boys” and were ostracized by the community.

8. An Overview of the Novel, In Five Chapters
Chapter 1: “Evacuation Order #18”: About evacuation from Berkeley,
from mother’s point of view; narrative is third person indirect.
Chapter 2: “Train”: About the train trip from Tanforan to Topaz, from
the adolescent daughter’s perspective, with flashbacks about Tanforan.
Chapter 3: “When the Emperor was Divine”: About life at Topaz, from
the boy’s point of view. The family is in crisis; the boy’s thoughts are
about his father.
Chapter 4: “In a Stranger’s Backyard”: About return to Berkeley, from
the children’s perspective. First person plural narration; “we,” not “I.”
Chapter 5: “Confession,” An extended monologue by the father
confessing to every false accusation, every fear anyone ever harbored
about the Japanese.

9. Otsuka, in an interview with Asia Society, On
the Power of Details
AS: You pay great attention to detail in your writing which really makes the
reader feel a part of the experience. I know a lot of people have noticed
this about your novel and found it to be more powerful than focusing on
the broader injustice and victimization of the internment. Did you decide
this early on or is this more a result of your style of writing?
JO: I never made a conscious decision to focus on detail. I think that, because
of my background as a painter, I’m very concerned with what the world looks
like. I have to visualize a scene in my head before I can begin to write it. Also,
I wasn’t interested in writing a novel about injustice and victimization, I
wanted to write a novel about real people.

10. A Reason We Don’t Know This Story Well
AS: Your family was interned during the war. Can you tell me how this
influenced the writing of When the Emperor was Divine?
JO: There was always a lot of silence in my family about the
internment—nobody seemed to want to talk about it. The war was
something that I, too, tended to avoid in my own work. For years I
wrote only comic stories, but as time went on, images of the war began
to surface in my writing. So clearly the camps were something I needed
to write about. The first chapter of my novel, “Evacuation Order No.
19,” was the first piece of ‘serious’ fiction I’d ever written.

11. Images of Fumi Hayashida and daughter, members of the first
group of Japanese residents to be removed from Bainbridge
Island, March 23, 1942, past and present

12. Wendy Maruyama, creator of the Tag Project

13. “The sign had appeared overnight. On billboards and trees and
the backs of the bus-stop benches . . .” from When the Emperor
was Divine; from Mine Okubo, Citizen 13660 (1947)

14. So how to make this story real to our students, to
make the characters and their suffering real.

15. Some Background: Images by Dr. Seuss,
pre-World War II

16. and Post-World War II

17. The first entry in the Art Diary of Takuichi Fujii (left),
a watercolor on the theme by Fujii(right)

18. from Exclusion Order No. 18
Pursuant to the provisions of Civilian Exclusion Order No. 18, this Headquarters, dated April 24,
1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien, will be evacuated from the area
above by 12 o’clock noon, May 1, 1942 . . .
2. Evacuees must carry with them on departure for the Assembly Center, the following property:
a) Bedding and linens (no mattress) for each member of the family;
b) Toilet articles for each member of the family;
c) Extra clothing for each member of the family;
d) Sufficient knives, forks, spoons, plates, bowls and cups for each member of the family;
e) Essential personal effects for each member of the family.
All items carried will be securely packaged, tied and plainly marked with the name of the owner . . .
The size and number of packages is limited to that which can be carried by the individual or family
group.
3. No pets of any kind will be permitted.

19. Images by Roger Shimomura

20. “April 21, 1942,” From An American Diary (2003-2004)
by Roger Shimomura

21. American Citizens
by Roger Shimomura

22. Japs Galore and other Images
by Roger Shimomura

23. Roger Shimomura, The Line-up (2006)

24. The New Exhibit at Manzanar
“Standing in line in front of the
latrine, standing in line for our
bath. That was a shock... we got
sick... we couldn't go... we didn't
want to go. It was smelly and it
was dirty. There were no
partitions and it was so cramped
that we almost touched each
other. It was very humiliating.”
Mary Tsukamoto

25. Image of the men’s latrine at Camp Harmony; inside the train
to Minidoka, by Takuichi Fujii

26. The American Way?

27. One Moment at Evening

28. Listen
as a sentry passes, and time
too, tick tock, his steps
across the gravel rhyming
with the pick pock
of the shuttlecock—
one girl hits it, now the other,
a sound like small stones
dropping into a pool
of old men’s voices.
ow the other,
a sound like small stones dropping

29. Because of a strike. . .
The supply of coal was cut for awhile
and people in the camp were
greatly inconvenienced.
. . . a mountain of coal
. . . now hardly enough
to pick any up.
Takuichi Fujii

30. A page spread from the Art Diary of T. Fujii

31. Drawing Breath
Sketch after sketch
he is drawing himself
out of there
out the open window
through a barbed wire fence
past that barn
in the distance—
drawing breath
like coal smoke
up the chimney
he disappears

32. Where to Find the Entire Interview with Julie
Otsuko
https://asiasociety.org/arts/literature/when-emperor-was-divine-and-
when-japanese-americans-were-rounded