When the Emperor was Divine

The book follows a family of Japanese Americans through the pre-war period on through the evacuation and the internment. It starts out as usual with the husband being taken by the F.B.I. Then there's a couple of things that I found unusual and rather upsetting. She kills a dog and releases her family's pet bird into the wild without making any attempt at all to find if someone else will care for them. Due to that and some other things I questioned often through the book whether or not the woman was mentally disturbed, to say the least.

The family ends up at Tanforan and then is moved on to the Topaz internment camp. There's the usual description of the conditions in the camp then there's another thing that I found very hard to understand. One of the kids gets a present that is sent from outside the camp and it's a pocket knife.

Wouldn't every in-incoming package had been subject to searching? The military certain didn't want any of the internees to have a knife or any other form of weapon.

The story continues to when the family is released and returns to home they had. The father is finally able to return although the experience has aged him considerably.

That the book is told from different points of view is good but the way the book started out didn't sit well with me, the knife matter was hard to believe and I never really got to feel much for the mother. I've seen better books dealing with the families and what happened to them and how they handled it.

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