Quotable Quotes- When the Emperor was Divine

"Sometimes he worries he was there because he'd done something horribly, terribly wrong.  But then when he tries to remember what that horrible, terrible thing might be, it would not come to him.  It could be anything.  Something he'd done yesterday--chewing the eraser off his sister's pencil before putting it back in the pencil jar--or something he'd done a long time age that was just now catching up with him.  Break a chain letter from Juneau, Alaska.  Flushing his dying pet goldfish down the toilet before it was completely dead.  Forgetting to touch the hat rack three times when the iceman drove by.  Sometimes he thought he was dreaming, and he was sure that when he woke up his father would be downstairs in the kitchen whistling "Begin the Beguine" through his teeth as he fried up breakfast in the skillet.  'Here it comes, champ,' his father would say, 'one hobo egg sandwich.'"

In this quote Julie Otsuka reflects on the fact that there was no reason for the treatment of the Japanese Americans through the eyes of a child.  His guilt and search for the mistake he made emphasizes his innocence and really causes the reader to reflect on the tragedy of the Japanese internment.  It also reaffirms that these people are just like us, they do things like break chain letters and mess with our siblings things.  This quote is so clearly through the eyes of a child; I would believe that a child wrote this, which makes me sympathize even more.  Something about hurting children is just unacceptable and even more awful than hurting adults, because they are so innocent and so young.


"Nothing's changed we said to ourselves.  The war had been an interruption, nothing more.  We would pick up our lives where we had left off and go on.  We would go back to school again.  We would study hard, every day, to make up for lost time.  We would seek out our old classmates.  'Where were you?' they'd ask, or maybe they would just nod and say, 'Hey.' We would join their clubs, after school, if they let us.  We would listen to their music. We would  dress just like they did.  We would change our names to sound more like theirs.  And if our mother called out to us on the street by our real names we would turn away and pretend not to know her.  We would never be mistaken for the enemy again!"

This quote was really touching to me.  We would never be mistaken for the enemy again.  It is so shameful what we did to our own people.  I think that this also shows the generation gap that I think often exists in the Asian community.  Maybe this is where it began.  The younger generation wants to assimilate and become Americans while the older generation tries to maintain the culture and roots that they left behind.  In many cases the younger generation is even ashamed of their past and their heritage, which in this case is because they've been told their heritage is the enemy.  To say you will pretend not to know your mother is a pretty profound statement.  It's sad that  these children felt they had to dress the same as everyone else and listen to the same music as everyone else and change their very identity in order to avoid being the enemy.  Doesn't sound like freedom to me.