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Book Review of When the Emperor Was Divine

When the Emperor Was Divine
reviewed on + 27 more book reviews


This beautiful little book is the simply told, but very affecting story of a Japanese family living in California in 1942 who, as "enemy aliens", are forcibly removed from their home and sent to an internment camp in the desert. The camp had watch towers, guard dogs, barbed wire fences, no indoor toilets, and other indignities. The reader never learns the names of the father, mother, son, or daughter, and somehow, that makes the reader realize that the experiences the father, mother, son and daughter relate are the experiences of 110,000 Japanese-Americans, whose exclusion lasted three years. A powerful tale of a shameful episode in U.S. history.