Experiences and Events of the Internment Camp - Essay Example

ENGLISH Julia Otsuka: Experiences and Events of the Internment Camp Julia Otsuka’s novel seeks to portray a sequence of events that happened to a Japanese American family after they were relocated from their home in Berkeley, California and were forced to live in an internment camp far away from home during World War II. Some of the experiences the family endured include the first being that they were relocated from their home in Berkeley, California to go and live in an internment camp. It all started with the woman seeing a sign in a post office window. The woman returned back home and started packing all her belongings together with those of the family. The reason behind this was that Japanese Americans had been posed as enemy aliens by the State and they were subject to being relocated to far destination camps such as the one in the Utah desert. After the woman saw the sign post, she went down to their house and scribbled down a few words which turned out to be spoons, forks, linen, cloths, bowls, cups and plates (Otsuka 3). This might have been what she assumed she would carry or, maybe, leave. The experience here is that the family, mostly the woman in this first case scenario, faces an emotional breakdown, pressure and fear as she has a vivid picture of how the camps look like. Otsuka describes the camp image as that of thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences (49). According to this imagery in the mind of the woman, it impacts how the woman is thinking and also how she is to reveal that to her children. The woman clearly knows that they are going to relocate. For example, during the period of relocation, nine days passed after the woman saw the notice. In fact when she was packing, out of fear, the woman did not finish packing all their belongings. In addition, she had to rekindle past calamities by having no option but to kill their dog as dogs were not allowed at the camp (9). In the same stride, the woman goes to the hardware store and makes a purchase of two rolls of tape and a ball of twine so that she could use them to finish packing their belongings (5). As a matter of fact, the store owner tells the woman that she can pay later, but she focuses on clearing the payment because she knows that this is her last time in town. This experience affected this woman because she did not even know what she was doing; all acts on her choices were because of fear, not mentioning the experience that her children would undergo as they were taken in to the camp (5). At the internment camp, the family underwent a lot of challenges. The boy thinks he is seeing his father because the man that sat next to him at the camp looked like his father. Again, during one mealtime as they were in the mess hall, the boy shouts out to his father, "Papa." This is just an illusion as his mother corrects him and his sister kicks him just to shake him out of that idea (49). Back then, the mother had also warned the son to reply a “yes” to anybody who asked him whether he was Chinese. And if anyone asks, you're Chinese. The boy had nodded. "Chinese," he whispered. "I'm Chinese." "And I," said the girl, "am the Queen of Spain." "In your dreams," said the boy. "In my dreams," said the girl, "I'm the King (75). With this change, the mother warns the son of two important facts: one is that the boy, when asked, should say that he is Chinese, and again the boy was told never to say the Emperor’s name in public as this would get him in a lot of trouble and the American government would conclude that the boy was loyal to the emperor as compared to the American government. On the other side of the wall by his bed lived a man and his wife and the wife’s elderly mother, Mrs. Kato, who talked to herself night and day (55). This event at the camp affected the son who lived next to a woman who had probably stayed at the camp long enough to get into the state that she was in. In addition, Otsuka goes ahead to describe the situation of the boy, “ at night he woke up crying out, “Where am I?”, sometimes he felt a hand on his shoulder and it was his sister telling him it was just a bad dream. “Go back to sleep baby,” she whispered, and he would (57). This even totally made the boy fear the life that he endured at the camp. With all the illusions of where he was when he woke up, sometimes he could still think that when he woke up his father would be around, but all that never came to pass. Living at the camp, there was not much to expect. All that the boy in this case could await for was a letter from his father. As described, “Every few days the letters arrived, tattered and torn, from Lordsburg, New Mexico. Sometimes entire sentences had been cut out with a razor blade by the censors and the letters did not make any sense. Sometimes they arrived in one piece, but with half of the words blacked out. Always, they were signed, “From papa, With Love” (59). This event totally captured the boy in the moment. All he had faith in was that his father would at least write him a letter. Regardless of how it occurred to him and if it made sense, all the boy looked forward to was the last part in the letter “From papa, With Love.” The boy has completely shut down reality. All he could remember about the father was the last time he saw him in a bathrobe and with no shoes. The girl, on the other side, started to get accustomed to the camp as she made play friends so that all the events at the camp could be seen a little common and so that she would not feel the fear and loneliness of her family creep in. The mother, on the other hand, became traumatized with her looks. The sun had affected her looks and she thought that the husband could not recognize her when he came back. Towards the end of the whole experience and the events that happened in their lives, the family arrives back at home in Berkeley, California. The aftermath experience as the mother thought was that many would not be happy with their return. At this point they again live in fear as the children do not know what to make of that comment from their mother. After arriving home, they found their house in a bad state where some of their things had been stolen, including their precious family possessions. After resettling in their home, they still had the camp mentality of sleeping together in one room. In this case, they went back to the old habits of sleeping in the back room – all of them together. “If we did something wrong, we made sure to say excuse me (excuse me for looking at you, excuse me for sitting here, excuse me for coming back). If we did something terribly wrong we immediately said we were sorry (I’m sorry I touched your arm. I didn’t mean to, it was an accident; I didn’t see it resting there so quietly, so beautifully, so perfectly, so irresistibly, on the edge of the desk. I lost my balance and brushed against it by mistake, I was standing too close, I wasn’t watching where I was going, somebody pushed me from behind, I never wanted to touch you, I have always wanted to touch you, I will never touch you again, I promise, I swear…)” (122). Lastly, the father returned from New Mexico and their entire family was reunited although not the same. This is “because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father's place" (132). The father experienced torture and returned a different man where his health was also a challenge. The father explains how he explained the whole ordeal to his interrogators and added that he told them what they wanted to hear. “I was scared.” “So I did what I had to do. I talked.” "We didn't want to know. . . . All we wanted to do, now that we were back in the world, was forget" (133). With this confirmation, the father apologizes for what he did although in the real sense, he told the interrogators what they wanted to hear just for him to be reunited with his family. Works Cited Otsuka, Julie. When the Emperor Was Divine. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007. Print Read More