A Novel Scripted From History

Dennis Shaughnessey - The Sun

They have no names.

They are just people, conjured from the imagination of Julie Otsuka.

Otsuka, author of "When The Emperor was Divine", was inspired by the experience of family members who were detained in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.

"It was never my intention to write a book," Otsuka told about 200 people attending the Middlesex Community College One World Series on Monday. "But images of the war began to surface in my psyche and in my writing for reasons I didn't quite understand. I needed to write about it."

Growing up in California, Otsuka, 46, knew very little about her family's experience.

"There was a lot of silence about what had happened," she said. "There was a reluctance to talk about it. There was a repressed anger surrounding those events."

Writing the book was a way for Otsuka to figure out what the silence and the anger were about. The book, which took her 5 1/2 years to write, is loosely based on her mother's life. Her grandfather was the

general manager of an import-export company in San Francisco who was arrested by the FBI the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. She imagines her grandmother and her mother and uncle, wondering why he did not come home from work and why they had not heard from him in days.

Several days later, her grandmother received a package in the mail that included a letter from her husband. He said he had been arrested at the immigration-detention center and asked her to bring the children to see him because he had something to tell them. He was one of 1,200 arrested in the first 24 hours following the bombing.

"He was listed as a dangerous enemy alien, which is the equivalent of an enemy combatant today," she said.

Her family, along with thousands of others, were rounded up and brought to camps.

"When my mother, who was 11 at the time, spoke of the camps, it was always in light tones. She spoke of the crepe-sole shoes from Montgomery Ward that were given to her," she said. "I remember thinking that it must be like the summer camps that we are all familiar with."

Research for her book took her to the internment camp in Topaz, Utah, where her family was held for the duration of the war. She saw the rows of tar-papered storage sheds that became home for many of the 110,000 families of Japanese ancestry. And still, Otsuka's family did not discuss it.

"Why draw attention to yourself? That was the sentiment. It was in poor taste to talk about it. It was a shameful episode in their history," she explained. "But I feel the story is important and has still not been told."

The book, which was first published in 2003, is written from the perspective of a family living in one of the camps. None of the characters have names. They are simply referred to as the father, the mother, the son and the daughter. Otsuka told the group that it was a conscious decision.

"It just felt right to write it that way," she said. "The story is about no one particular family, but all the families that lived through the experience."

The silence and quiet submission is broken in the last chapter when the father unleashes a torrent of anger directed at his captors. Years of simmering anger is released in the father's final outburst.

"As soon as the voice came to me, I knew I had found the right ending to the novel," Otsuka said. "I went back and tweaked to get the details to sing. I looked up five-and-a-half-years later and I was suddenly done with my novel."

When the Emperor was Divine was chosen as MCC's common book and the response from the 1,500 students, faculty and staff who read the novel has been enthusiastic, said MCC Vice President Mary Jane McCarthy. The One World Series is sponsored by the MCC Student Government, the Writing Across the Curriculum Committee and the Humanities Division.

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