"When the Emperor was Divine" by Julie Otsuka

For my summer reading project, I read the book When The Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. In this book, you follow a Japanese mother and her two children as they sent away from their homes to a filthy internment camp in the Utah desert. This is after the father of the house was taken away and sent to work for the military. You follow the perspectives of not only the mother, but also her son and her a daughter. 

One thing I liked about this book was how descriptive it was. While reading I was able to picture many things very vividly in my head, from the fair neighborhood in Berkeley, California to the harsh, beating sun of the Utah internment camp. There was a plethora of expressive adjectives, many of which I had to look up in order to know what it meant. Another thing I liked about this book was that it was able to explore three different characters very thoroughly. Since the book jumps from one point of view to another, the book was able to show me more personal characteristics about the characters such as life goals or important things in their lives. This helped me to create more connections with the characters, as well as keep me interested in their sides of the story.

 One thing I didn't like is is that sometimes the book seems boring with many run-on sentences. Other times it felt like the story was progressing very slowly, and this made me lose interest in what was happening. 

Overall, I would give this book a 7 out of 10. It was very descriptive and painted clear pictures in my mind while I was reading and it was able to keep me interested through the uses of different characters' point of views. The plot of the story helped to keep me immersed because I was never informed of how discrimination still existed in the US during World War II. Because of this, the book had great informational value. What kept me from giving this book a higher score was that sometimes the story felt like it progressed slowly. This made me want to skip reading paragraphs at some point because nothing interesting would be happening. 

I would recommend this book to people who like to read historical fiction or people who are interested in World War II. This book does a great job storytelling one of the dark times in US history and has good information on how Japanese American people were treated in World War II.

If you are interested in the interment camps found in When the Emperor was Divine, you can look at this link!
National World War II Museum: Glance of Japanese Internment