Racism In Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

The novel When the Emperor Was Divine tells a story of Japanese-American families during World War Two. During internment, the U.S. government rounded up many Japanese adults for investigation without first producing evidence that they committed any crimes. The father in this story has been arrested for the sane reason. Army would deport all Japanese Americans to military camps, thus commencing Japanese American internment.So, the woman with her girl and her boy have to move to a camp. This is the exact act of racism. they have never committed any crimes, they have to move just because of they are from china. racism effect different gender indifference ways and it makes them act differently as this book explains. How can racism effect on different gender?

As many other American girls , the girl has internalized white beauty

The boy’s description of the Japanese prisoners shows that he’s assimilated the prevalent racist beliefs about Japanese people. Using racially insensitive language, the boy expresses the stereotype that “all Asian people look alike.” Additionally, their perceived “inscrutability” was the exact reason why the U.S. government locked up innocent Japanese Americans citizens in the first place.

According to Otsuka (2003), "On the first day of the camp, the mother tells him to never touch the fences and to never to say the Emperor’s name aloud". In defiance of his mother’s warning, the boy sometimes walks past the guard towers, pulls his hat down over his head, and whisper the Emperor’s name. The woman knows that if the guards hear the boy say the Emperor’s name, they will be suspicious that the boy and his family are allied with Japan and the divine Emperor. As a small act of resistance, then, the boy repeats the Emperor’s name as a way of holding onto his heritage and cultural identity even as the government tries to demonize it or strip it