When the Emperor Was Divine KINDLE MOBI by Julie Otsuka H.A.

When the Emperor was Divine (Julie Otsuka, 2003) follows an unnamed Japanese American family during World War II, told through perspectives of the four family members over five chapters. Based loosly on the experiences of Otsuka's mother, the novel presents a shameful wrong dealt to Japanese Americans (and Canadians) by a paranoid government who acted rashly in response to a growing racism among the population, and one which exposed how appearance and not nationhood (Germans who lived near either coast were not shunted off to camps) was its guiding force. As a family on the west coast, the family in When the Emperor Was Divine were removed from their home and sent to the desert salt flats of Utah, a bleak and desolate place. The father had already been arrested by the FBI and sent to an even more remote place, though the novel does detail his experiences. The young children, a girl and a boy, spend their formative years in the ramshackle camp, fed, clothed and educated in a rudimentary way, but with no contact with the outside world. Returning to their home after the war, they must struggle in every way against the still pervasive paranoia and hatred of the Japanese after the war, though the children are American born and know almost nothing of their parent's homeland.