When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

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Title: When the Emperor Was Divine

Author: Julie Otsuka

Genre: Historical Fiction

Length: 144 pages

Published: 2003

Publisher: Anchor

Brief Synopsis: (Taken from Goodreads) On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert.

In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines.

My Review:

I give this book a 5 out of 5. 

This was a sad glimpse into a part of American history that many people forget even happened. During WWII, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, many Japanese-Americans were rounded up and shipped to internment camps or arrested as suspected spies. The story follows a mother and her children as they were forced to leave their home and live in one of these camps. Their father is not with them as he was arrested by the FBI sometime prior and living in a prison camp in Texas. Definitely worth picking up!

You can purchase When the Emperor Was Divine through Amazon in hard copy or Kindle format. 

Have you read When the Emperor Was Divine? If so, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts! 

Please note: I was not compensated in any way for this review. It is strictly my opinion.