Wow!  Julie Otsuka, has some literary skills, her novel When the Emperor was Divine kept me along side them during their journey.  The story telling skills she uses of this unfortunate time in our history was compelling and I had a hard time putting the book down.  This story follows a Japanese American family in 1942 through the personal battles of being sent to an exclusion camp after Pearl Harbor, through life behind the fences over 3 and a half years.  And ends with life back home after being released from the camp, reunited with their father and the differences in what their lives used to be.

I was shocked at how deliberate the Mothers actions were, as she prepared to be shipped off to camp.  She willingly went home, and packed their entire home up.  She kept a positive outlook of the Exclusion process and leaving their home in front of the children.  Was this cause she just wanted to conform?  To not stick out?  You could tell their family was a stable Japanese American family, having lived in nice neighborhoods and having attained silks and other upper middle class personal belongings.  Like a vacuum cleaner, a piano and a picking up the face cream before leaving on the train.

The way she prepared the Yard chicken for dinner, gave the cat to the neighbors, let the daughters bird go free, and when she killed the dog rather that making him suffer.  Her actions in preparing to leave were all really thought out, nothing was done half assed.  The fact she contemplated using the “bigger hammer” to kill the dog, feeding him the rice balls and cracked an egg on his last meal.  She picked the perfect place to bury him, just like the bonsai.  A place that got some sun, but not to much.  And a place that didn’t get to much rain.

The trip to the camp after spending several months in the stables, a time of transition.  The kids bonding and still working together as a family.  Taking care of each other, the bond was still there.  The mother puts her comfort second to the kids, making sure they were comfortable on the trip.  She slept sitting up against the wall on her suitcase giving the children the seats.  The boy waiting for the horses and finally seeing them in the distance also stood out to me.  He had always wanted to see a horse and his sister made sure to wake him up to show them too him.

The camps dust seeping through every crack of the barracks, and the sound a smell of the mess hall.  Everything Otsuka writes you can see.  She is so good at describing the surroundings and the environment of the camp you don’t have to try hard to imagine how hot it got during the day.  Or how the dust got everywhere, and your lungs filled with dust during the wind storms.  The pride the mothers took of their room was something interesting, you could sense the pride she kept in their house back home and how it carried over to here.

Another thing that really stood out to me was the description of the Key mother carried around her neck, and how it had become a part of her.  Something they always saw on her, whether it was under her cloths or just the outline on her chest.  The key represented the strong will of their family to make it through this time.  If she lost it they would fall apart.  When she pulled it off her head effortlessly to open the door to the past.

I can’t imagine having my father removed one night from home, with no answers and just having faith that someday he would be released.  Having faith in the system, and being removed from my home.  Packing up all my stuff and just walking away.  But through their drive to be American, they did this.  Without fault, and with faith that they would be allowed to return to home.  That their dad would be returned too.

The final chapter is deep, really brings home the thought that even though they are back home together.  Nothing has changes, and is in fact probably worse than before the war.  White people see them(Asians of all walks) in a worse light, and that all Asian are some kind of thief, spy, bad seeds, a villain trying to lash out at america from within the borders.  And all they want to to do is move forward, rebuild their lives and keep reaching for that American Dream.

This book really gave me a better outlook on another side of the Pearl Harbor bombing and what happened to the Japanese Americans in the United States.  The ones that had been a successful hand in building the country into what it had become to that point.  I feel a similar guilt for my culture, that they did which was out of their control.  We are all apart of the world together.  Let’s start acting like it.