Julie Otsuka's Ties With Empathy And Unviersalism

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Ties with Empathy and Unviersalism Julie Otsuka leaves her characters unnamed in her novel When the Emperor was Divine to really grab the reader’s attention and therefore, making it a definite way to empathize with these characters. These characters are unnamed to give a sense of stepping into someone else’s shoes. Julie’s novel was based in the historical time period of the Japanese Internment camps. Otsuka purposely withheld her character’s names from the reader because it made the story universal instead of focusing on one family’s experience. A couple of months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, U.S. There was an Evacuation Order 9066 ordering all Japanese-Americans to evacuate the West Coast. Approximately over 100,000 people, were relocated to one of ten internment camps located across the country, regardless of loyalty or citizenship. Rumors were spread, progressed by race prejudice, that Japanese-Americans were spies of the Emperor to sabotage the war effort. Ten internment camps were established in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. (History.com 1) Many were forced to sell their property, much less than they paid for, before departure. Businesses must be sold, there was storage available, though you had to see the Evacuation Order in a timely fashion to even start the preparations for storage. Many Japanese-Americans had to get rid of many household items and furniture because not …show more content…

The novel challenges a reader’s willingness, to confront the dangers of empathetic

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