From a historical standpoint, the cruelty, misery, and mistreatment that was inflicted upon Japanese American families at the time of World War II is nothing but obvious. Similar to how supposedly supreme Nazis treated inferior Jews at the time, American government officials showed a glimpse of what discrimination against a racial group could entail, developing internment camps for citizens of Japanese ancestry to inhabit during the sensitive occurrences of wartime. Julie Otsuka’s novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, excels in illustrating an inside look at the lives of a Japanese American mother, daughter, and son of this period, from the time they received notice of their district evacuation to the time they packed and loaded up on a train,
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This theme is first evident in Otsuka’s novel through the young female character’s actions, notably when she stops her watch at six o’clock after getting off the train; as a result, when the boy asks what time it is weeks later, she says six o’clock, not really knowing what hour, day, or month they were actually in (65). In other parts of the book, the mother mistakenly forgets to put on rice for her rice balls, simply because she too is disoriented by the motionless time she is living in (85). Just like these characters, suspects spending hours locked in a holding room, awaiting investigators to come and question them, fall victim to the same inability to tell time. In most interrogation rooms, including the one in the visual, there are no clocks, no windows, no signs of the outside world or events of reality; as a result, suspects often go psychologically mad. Eventually, minutes turn to hours, hours turn to days, and days turn to weeks, leaving them waiting “for one day to be over and the next day to begin” (54). Regardless of whether in the context of interrogation rooms or internment camps, the people involved repeatedly express their sole desire to be set free, yearning to return to their normal life and home. To the Japanese Americans, being in the camp made them feel as if they were in a state of limbo, constantly waiting to return to the lives they had left behind. The same can be said for suspected criminals, proclaiming their innocence and screaming at that one-way mirror to finally be turned
This theme is first evident in Otsuka’s novel through the young female character’s actions, notably when she stops her watch at six o’clock after getting off the train; as a result, when the boy asks what time it is weeks later, she says six o’clock, not really knowing what hour, day, or month they were actually in (65). In other parts of the book, the mother mistakenly forgets to put on rice for her rice balls, simply because she too is disoriented by the motionless time she is living in (85). Just like these characters, suspects spending hours locked in a holding room, awaiting investigators to come and question them, fall victim to the same inability to tell time. In most interrogation rooms, including the one in the visual, there are no clocks, no windows, no signs of the outside world or events of reality; as a result, suspects often go psychologically mad. Eventually, minutes turn to hours, hours turn to days, and days turn to weeks, leaving them waiting “for one day to be over and the next day to begin” (54). Regardless of whether in the context of interrogation rooms or internment camps, the people involved repeatedly express their sole desire to be set free, yearning to return to their normal life and home. To the Japanese Americans, being in the camp made them feel as if they were in a state of limbo, constantly waiting to return to the lives they had left behind. The same can be said for suspected criminals, proclaiming their innocence and screaming at that one-way mirror to finally be turned