Otsuka Julie Otsuka\'s Novel When the Emperor

Otsuka

Julie Otsuka's novel When the Emperor was Divine explores the realities of life in the Japanese internment camps in the American southwest during World War Two. The novel's historical accuracy can be proven by comparing the details in the lives of those who actually did live in the internment camps, as well as with the actual executive orders and decrees used to institutionalize racism in America. The state-sanctioned racism against Asian-Americans during the internment camp phase was of course not an isolated incident, as it paralleled other types of institutionalized racism including the treatment of African-Americans and Native Americans. Moreover, the internment camps represented a culmination of anti-Asian measures. There was historical precedent for the internment camps as a specific manifestation of anti-Asian fears.

One of the earliest legalized forms of racism against Asians was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a reaction against the influx of Chinese laborers that had been participating in major public works and commercial projects including the railroads. Specifically, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 "prohibited (1) the immigration of Chinese laborers, (2) denied Chinese of naturalization; (3) and required Chinese laborers already legally present in the U.S. who later wish to reenter to obtain 'certificates of return.'"[footnoteRef:1] The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 specifically targeted Asians, while allowing for further immigrants to enter the United States from countries or regions deemed more desirable. Therefore, the Japanese internment camps during World War Two were certainly not the first manifestation of institutionalized racism directed specifically at Asians. Pearl Harbor was merely a precipitating event. [1: "The Chinese Exclusion Acts: A Racist Chapter in U.S. Civil Rights History." OCA National Office, accessed 8 Dec, 2014, http://ocaseattle.org/2012/05/21/the-chinese-exclusion-acts-a-racist-chapter-in-u-s-civil-rights-history/]

Anti-Asian racism during the industrial age began nearly as soon as Chinese laborers began arriving to the West coast in the 1850s and "peaked during the 1870s and 1880s."[footnoteRef:2] Purported reasons for the anti-Asian sentiment during the Industrial Age included the perception that "they were willing to get paid lower wages and willing to do jobs whites shunned."[footnoteRef:3] Heller frames the anti-Asian sentiment of the Industrial Age as being linked to threats to Manifest Destiny and the desire of some to create a "white republic' with a racially exclusive form of wage labor and industrialization excluding those deemed too 'lazy' or too 'hard working.'"[footnoteRef:4] [2: Ibid.] [3: Ibid.] [4: Steven Heller. "The Artistic History of American Anti-Asian Racism." The Atlantic, 20 Feb, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/02/the-artistic-history-of-american-anti-asian-racism/283962/]

Racism is irrational, but the effects of racism are tangible and linger on the historic record as well as in the memories of those who survive. Many did not survive the scourge of racism in America. In addition to common acts of abuse like public humiliation, harassment, and beating, many Asians in the American west during the Industrial Age were murdered and lynched.[footnoteRef:5] Chinese residents were likewise denied the right to vote, and therefore were systematically disenfranchised. As a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act, those who had already emigrated remained in a hostile culture that disallowed the organic growth of Asian communities. Segregation and ghettoization into Chinatowns, the refusal to enable females to join their husbands, and other institutionalized forms of racism led to tangible effects in Asian communities throughout America including human trafficking, drug abuse, and crime.[footnoteRef:6] Such problems only perpetuated anti-Asian sentiments, so that by World War Two, the American public was won't to support Executive Order 9066. [5: Ibid.] [6: Ibid.]

Just as there was an irrational response to Asian immigration in the nineteenth century, there was also an irrational response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Americans of Japanese ancestry had nothing to do with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and yet President Roosevelt framed the issue as a matter of national security. Playing on the deep-rooted fears of Americans, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, stating, "Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities."[footnoteRef:7] The result was a ready roundup of all persons even suspected of having Japanese ancestry, stripping American citizens of their rights, violating the American constitution, and forcibly incarcerating large numbers of people. As many as 110,000 men, women and children were sent to "relocation centers" and stripped of their right to due process, let alone livelihood or property ownership.[footnoteRef:8] These are the relocation centers described by Otsuka in When the Emperor Was Divine. In When the Emperor Was Divine, the experience of being in the internment camp was similar to being in prison. One man was, for example, shot dead simply because he had been walking too close to the barbed wire fence.[footnoteRef:9] [7: "Executive Order 9066: The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation." History Matters, accessed 8 Dec, 2014, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5154] [8: Michael Upchurch. "The Last Roundup." The New York Times, 22 September, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/22/books/the-last-roundup.html] [9: Julie Otsuka. When the Emperor Was Divine. (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 101]