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Please help me fix this essay. Thank you. There are 2 mains comments: – This is from a source material, so where is the in-text citation? – This paragraph lacks/needs additional relevant support from all three article to explain and to illustrate your key points. (which is write “See the chat”)
Truong Mai
Professor Sherryanne B. Lim
English 001A
5 July 2020
Essay 3
“When the emperor was divine” is a fictional documentary book written by an American novelist Julie Otsuka, centering a Japanese American family dispatched to an imprisonment camp during World War II in Utah desert. However, this novel has slightly emphasized the wartime encounters of Otsuka’s mother’s family; instead, it is written through the notion of four family individuals, analyzing their dispossession from California to their experiences in the encampment. President Franklin Roosevelt commanded the forced deportation and incarnation because he was reluctant that the Japanese Americans would engage with Japan in the sabotage against the United States. Many Japanese civilians and citizens were taken to internment encampment, where they were mistreated like the prisoners of war. “President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, empowering the U.S Army to designate areas from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” No person of Japanese ancestry living in the United States was ever convicted of any dangerous act of espionage or sabotage during the war” (Burton et al.,1). The book begins featuring a Japanese lady who remains unnamed seeing a symbol at the post office, whereby the Japanese citizens were being told to relocate to another place chosen for them. Her husband is arrested and imprisoned in the camp since he is suspected to be an alien enemy with Japan. “On December 7, 1941, the nation of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle gave orders to the FBI to arrest a predetermined number of “dangerous enemy aliens” from Field’s lists – including 737 Japanese Americans” (Meller 74). The lady went back home and started preparing for their departure to Utah since she was acting as the caregiver and protector of the family after the imprisonment of her husband. She leaves behind everything, including their furniture and pets, and she killed her dog with the fear that it will starve after their departure. “Evacuees” were limited to bringing only “that which can be carried by the individual or family group.” Thus, Japanese Americans were forced to leave behind furniture, homes and beloved pet.” (Meller 74).
“Without knowing where they were going, or how long they would be detained, some spent weeks and months living on racetrack grounds that smelled of animals until the camps could be constructed. Then they were moved to 10 relocation centers, located in remote inland territories in California, Wyoming, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Utah and Colorado.” (Bowean 3). While in the camp, they experience many challenges like the extreme desert unbearable temperatures and dust. The boy is one of the main characters who encounter hardships since he did not comprehend why they were deported to the camps. On the other hand, he misses his dad so much, and he had illusions of seeing him whenever he sees any male in the encampment. They spent most of their time waiting for what to be told since they had no leaders to guide them. Otsuka emphasizes that Japanese Americans encountered racism and discrimination. She emphasizes the prevalence of these customs by highlighting how the unnamed character, the boy has internalized the same racist belief as white Americans. Because the boy had stayed his whole life in the United States, he is so assimilated into the American customs that he adopts the predominant belief of racism about the Japanese individuals. For instance, on their destination to the internment camp, he utilizes racially sensitive words to express how all the Japanese male looked like. On the other hand, the conditions at the internment camps were unoccupied, and the Japanese American individuals dwelled in uninsulated quarters furnished with coals. The netizens were using one shared washroom and bathroom facilities. The barracks were high guarded and patrolled by armed soldiers who had been instructed to shoot any individual who tried to escape. In his novel, Otsuka illustrates that the family shared a small room, and the woman always warned the children not to approach the barbed wire around the camp.
Furthermore, the Japanese Americans encountered cultural trauma in the internment camps, which resulted in them opting to seek the accepted structure of success in the United States. For instance, due to the traumatic experiences in the camps, the boy and the girl decides to be compliant and work very hard so that they will not be termed as the enemy again. American soldiers return from the war and tell horrible tails at the hands at Japanese civilians who endured abuse. “Some forced to wear metal bits, others starved to death. Trapped yanks doused with gasoline and turned into human torches.” (Otsuka 119). The boy and the girl “looked at ourselves in the mirror and did not like what we saw: black hair, yellow skin, slanted eyes. The cruel face of the enemy.” (Otsuka 119). They are guilty, but all they have to do is to persuade everyone that they are loyal to America. The kids hoped that by conforming to the traditional American interpretation of success, they would be recognized as loyal netizens; hence they will be free from future discrimination. The terror of going back to the internment eventually makes the kids to structure a new psychological form of cell. To be part and parcel of the stereotype minority, they had to suppress their feelings of frustration, anger, or anything that might be termed as unfavorable. They had to adhere to intolerance and racism of the white American kids without complaints. They had to accept all these so as not to look like they wanted to reform the existing circumstances. However, to accommodate the prototype minority’s ideal, the children had to limit their aspirations, emotions, and behaviors. In the end, they merely change from concrete prisons to psychological cells. On the other hand, in the internment; the family experienced the loss of identity and assimilation. For instance, the woman becomes a shell of her formal self, and she mostly spends her time in the camp lonely. She lost her strength that was the mark of her character, and the kids are more determined to hold their identities, although they eventually give up. For instance, the girl did not express her connection to the Japanese customs, but she holds much to her assimilated American identity. She started to distance herself from her family by spending more time with her American friends. To improve their lives in the incarceration centers, they had to adhere to the rules and regulations and accept any form of intolerance being done to them. Some of the Japanese American individuals were selected to be soldiers in the war and failure to admit they were killed. “Many imprisoned within the camps felt it an out-rage that they are forced to serve in the U.S. military. They felt the government had treated them poorly, denying them rights established by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. When one young man refused to register and conform to draft board orders, he was arrested and placed on trial.” (Meller 77)
Some of the global events which have occurred in the last 50 years include; women working in the factories in 1943, the Vietnam war in 1955, the civil rights act of 1964, 9/11 in 2001, and the Iraq war in 2003. For instance, the civil rights act, which became useful in 1964, was a law that was passed against discrimination against African Americans, most especially women, including racial discrimination. This legislation was passed to eliminate discrimination, and it allowed women to exercise voting in the United States. The Japanese Americans in the internment underwent racial segregation and discrimination. On the other hand, the Iraq war took place in 2003. This war led to much violence, and many individuals, including the soldiers, lost their lives, and many families were displaced. (Total Word Count = 1287).
Work Cited
Bowean, Lolly. “What Their Grandparents Didn’t Talk About: new generation of Japanese-Americans traces family history in U.S.-run internment camps.” The Chicago Tribune, www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-japanese-american-internment-camps-chicago-history-world-war-ii-20190502-story.html. Accessed 02 May 2019.
Burton, J., et al. “A Brief History of Japanese American Relocation During World War II.” Pp. 1-8.
Meller, Arica. “The Internment and Relocation of Japanese-Americans.” The World in the Twentieth Century, pp.73-78.
Otsuka, Julie. When The Emperor Was Divine. Anchor Books, 2002.