Internment Camps In Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

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Far too often, people may be judged by a group that is perceived to represent them, rather than that which they hold true to themselves. The world will give them judgment, without looking past the superficial layers making up the bare minimum of what distinguishes right from wrong and one man from another. Oftentimes this causes communities to change, forcing them to adapt, and even shift their culture completely, so that it falls easier on the eyes of another. In Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine, the Japanese American community is, wrongfully, seen as dangerous and threatening by their American neighbors; left fearful by the Pearl Harbor attacks. This fear leads Americans to force their Japanese citizens into internment camps, eventually changing …show more content…

The games that the young girls play in the camps, ones they have brought with them from their old lives, are American in nature, as Otsuka describes, “Three young girls, in dirty white frocks, were playing ladies in the dust-” (54). The young girls are not playing a traditional Japanese game, but rather they are playing ladies, pretending to be grown and mature beyond their years. Yet, this is accompanied by more dust; sticking to them, symbolizing how they are growing into a culture different from their own, and maturing into who the camps want them to be rather than what they may have been otherwise. Otsuka’s use of dust to symbolize the gradual influence of American culture on the Japanese people perfectly explains how they began to lose their identities as Japanese, as their culture began to become less of their own; more and more Americanized. These experiences at such a young age can change people in ways that may make them unrecognizable, even to themselves. The boy in the story changes from a carefree and innocent child, to a scared, tentative

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