This paper examines Julie Otsuka's novel "When the Emperor Was Divine" as a historically accurate account of Japanese American internment camps during World War II. It traces the roots of anti-Asian racism in America from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 through the industrial age, demonstrating that Executive Order 9066 was not an isolated incident but part of a long pattern of state-sanctioned discrimination. The paper compares the treatment of Japanese Americans to that of German residents and other marginalized groups, arguing that racism and white supremacy ideology shaped the severity and scope of Japanese internment. It concludes by examining post-war civil rights reforms and their partial remediation of internment-era injustices.
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 II. The novel's historical accuracy can be proven by comparing the details in the lives of those who actually lived in the internment camps 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 certainly 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 rooted in decades of legal discrimination and social hostility.
Anti-Asian racism during the industrial age began nearly as soon as Chinese laborers started arriving on the West Coast in the 1850s and peaked during the 1870s and 1880s. Purported reasons for the anti-Asian sentiment during this period included the perception that "they were willing to get paid lower wages and willing to do jobs whites shunned." Anti-Asian sentiment was framed 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." Understanding this historical backdrop is essential to understanding why the Japanese internment camps, when they came in 1942, encountered so little public resistance.
One of the earliest legalized forms of racism against Asians was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This landmark legislation was a reaction against the influx of Chinese laborers who had been participating in major public works and commercial projects including railroad construction. 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 wished to reenter to obtain 'certificates of return.'" The act specifically targeted Asians, while allowing further immigrants to enter the United States from countries or regions deemed more desirable. Therefore, the Japanese internment camps during World War II were certainly not the first manifestation of institutionalized racism directed specifically at Asians. Pearl Harbor was merely a precipitating event for policies with much deeper historical roots.
The consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act and broader anti-Asian sentiment extended far beyond legal restrictions. 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. 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. Chinese residents were likewise denied the right to vote and 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. Such problems only perpetuated anti-Asian sentiments, so that by World War II, the American public was conditioned to support Executive Order 9066.
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, 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." 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.
The scale of the internment was staggering. 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. These are the relocation centers described by Otsuka in When the Emperor Was Divine. In the novel, the experience of being in the internment camp is depicted as 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. Otsuka's fictional account aligns with historical records of violence, dehumanization, and despair within these camps.
The Japanese internment camps represented a low point in American multiculturalism. Ironically, the United States had been championing itself as an idealized nation with universal values. Yet the seeds for racial injustice had already been flowering with the continued disenfranchisement of African Americans and Native Americans as well as Asian Americans. A crucial insight emerges when examining Executive Order 9066 more closely. The order did not mention Japanese persons specifically; rather, it was broadly written to apply just as well to anyone deemed suspicious. Yet the application was starkly racial.
The disparity in treatment between Japanese Americans and German Americans during wartime is particularly revealing. About 11,000 German residents, including some naturalized citizens, were arrested and more than 5,000 were interned. It would seem that given the severe ideological threat posed by Hitler's Nazi regime, Germans would have been targeted more robustly than the Japanese. Given the reality, racism was a decisive factor given the European ancestry of Germans. "The war-time measures applied to Japanese Americans were worse and more sweeping, uprooting entire communities and targeting citizens as well as resident aliens" precisely because of anti-Asian sentiment and entrenched beliefs in white supremacy. This comparative analysis reveals that national security concerns were a pretext; racial ideology was the driver.
"Describes reforms addressing internment injustices"
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