When
the Emperor Was Divine tells a story of one Japanese American family’s
experience in internment camps during World War Two. The story is told through
the eyes of each of the four member of the family. One important detail, is the
characters are nameless, while there are a lot of characters with Americans
names. This represents the differences in the society between Americans and
American-Japanese people, where they even can’t use their own names, which
means the loss of Japanese’s identities and their loss of rights. The principal
characters symbolize any American-Japanese in the U.S in that moment.
I would like to recommend this book
because it tells a part of the history of the U.S that is not well known for
all. You can learn how they were treated and considered enemies aliens, only based in their origins. Throughout the reading, you can feel the sufferings and humiliations received by that family. The father's agonizing narration in the last pages of the book, touched me so much, because you can feel in your bones the torture suffered by him. Without alternatives, he declared falsely to be a spy, because that was what the Americans wanted to hear. The father, his family -like other thousands of families- will never be
the same.