An Analysis Of Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

Subsections (3) and (4) focus on discrimination really show how the Japanese were targeted because of their race. Not only did the government control where the Japanese were going to reside, but also the discrimination that they had to

This book reflects the author’s wish of not only remembering what has happened to the Japanese families living in the United States of America at the time of war but also to show its effects and how families made through that storm of problems and insecurities. The story takes in the first turn when the father of Jeanne gets arrested in the accusation of supplying fuel to Japanese parties and takes it last turn when after the passage of several years, Jeanne (writer) is living a contented life with her family and ponders over her past (Wakatsuki Houston and D. Houston 3-78). As we read along the pages

They were previously “special targets of white hostility ” (Pbs 1) and when the bombing happened they were set up to be blamed. Before Japanese Americans could not own land, eat in white restaurants, and some could not become citizens. They were not considered real citizens of the united states and this caused people to believe that they were traitors and untrustworthy. The bombing gave Americans a chance to “ renew their hostility toward their Japanese neighbor. ”(Pbs

Mary Matsuda Gruenewald tells her tale of what life was like for her family when they were sent to internment camps in her memoir “Looking like the Enemy.” The book starts when Gruenewald is sixteen years old and her family just got news that Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japan. After the bombing Gruenewald and her family life changed, they were forced to leave their home and go to internment camps meant for Japanese Americans. During the time Gruenewald was in imprisonment she dealt with the struggle for survival both physical and mental. This affected Gruenewald great that she would say to herself “Am I Japanese?

Matsuda’s memoir is based off of her and her family’s experiences in the Japanese-American internment camps. Matsuda reveals what it is like during World War II as a Japanese American, undergoing family life, emotional stress, long term effects of interment, and her patriotism and the sacrifices she had to make being in the internment camps. Everyone living in Western section of the United States; California, Oregon, of Japanese descent were moved to internment camps after the Pearl Harbor bombing including seventeen year old Mary Matsuda Gruenewald and her family. Matsuda and her family had barely any time to pack their bags to stay at the camps. Matsuda and her family faced certain challenges living in the internment camp.

A soldier tells them to put the shades down. The girl has a brief conversation with a Japanese man who only knows japanese. “The girl shook her head and said she was sorry she only spoke English” (Otsuka, 28) By saying this the girl emphasises the fact that she is a American girl and she has that identity and not just a japanese spy. The soldiers guarding the Japanese-American families makes guarding absurd.

Immigration in America is nothing new and it has had an impact on society for many years. People from all over come to America for a fresh start and to get away from any problems. You can’t really blame them for wanting to get away from where ever and wanting to start over. As George Takei talks about his experience as a Japanese-American and his view of the American Dream. Immigrants have many differences while in America.

African Americans on the battle front are put into segregated divisions, whereas Native Americans dealt with compliment racism or unintentional racism. Chinese Americans were concerned with being accused of being Japanese, while the Japanese Americans tried to prove they were American too. Throughout his book, Takaki demonstrates the varying levels of racism experienced, and how hard work and perseverance helped these groups prove themselves to some degree. Takaki claims, all of these minorities groups, gained some form of freedom and equality either through the military or through job opportunities and improvements.

The author, Jeanne Wakatsuki, presents a meaningful story filled with experiences that shaped not only her life, but shaped the lives of thousands of Japanese families living in America. The book’s foreword gives us a starting point in which the reader can start to identify why the book was written. “We a told a New York writer friend about the idea. He said: ‘It’s a dead issue. These days you can hardly get people to read about a live issue.

How would you feel if one day you were told to leave your whole life behind to live in captivity just because people halfway across the world did something wrong? This horror story was all too true for the thousands of Japanese Americans alive during World War II. Almost overnight, thousands of proud Japanese Americans living on the west coast were forced to leave their homes and give up the life they knew. The United States government was not justified in the creation of Japanese internment camps because it stripped law-abiding American citizens of their rights out of unjustified fear.

The father’s wife had recently died, leaving him with the boy to take care of with the only mindset of keeping him alive, doing anything for their survival. This affected the father in a big way, leaving him with little hope and hardly any reason to stay alive, but the boy was “his warrant” (McCarthy 5) , his only reason for life. The boy starts out very scared and weak, always wanting to hide behind his father, knowing that one day he will die. The boy matures with every event that happens, and he maintains to have hope throughout most of them. “The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead.

“The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion largely due to the physical characteristics of the people” (Martin 31). The Japanese didn’t resist being kicked because they felt like if they complied to prove their allegiance (Sandler 45). The Americans betrayed them out of fear. It was fear that drove the

Japanese-Americans living on the west coast were savagely and unjustifiably uprooted from their daily lives. These Japanese-Americans were pulled from their jobs, schools, and home only to be pushed to

In enduring these complex emotions, this section was the most remarkable part. One of the first apparent emotions the boy experiences with the death of his father is loneliness to make this section memorable. The boy expresses this sentiment when he stays with his father described as, “When he came back he knelt beside his father and held his cold hand and said his name over and over again,” (McCarthy 281). The definition of loneliness is, “sadness because one has no friends or company.”

As a result, all Japanese were discriminated in the U.S.A. as biased perceptions were already set in their minds. They were judging the Japanese as the whole, just because the attack of a small part of the