Can't Go Back

                The ordeal that this family had to ensue in the story When the Emperor was Divine, is something that I hope our country doesn’t inflict on another one of its citizens for the rest of our history. Since I didn’t live in the time surrounding Pearl Harbor, I can’t really begin to understand the fear that American citizens faced with their everyday lives. But I couldn’t imagine myself even for a split second thinking that every person of Japanese decent could be the ones directly responsible for the major attack. The family in the novel had to deal with the fact that their husband and father was one of the many Japanese men actually imprisoned because of the belief that he was directly connected to Pearl Harbor. And throughout the story are the family’s attempts at having the deal with the aftermath.

                The father was taken just months before the rest of the family was moved out to Utah. Sometimes the greatest way to get one’s mind off a great tragedy is through hope. And the only thing that this family had anything to be hopeful for is that one day they would see their beloved father and husband again. Throughout the families 4 year ordeal at the camps in Utah, the idea of their father was the only thing that held them together. And while it was a constant reminder that the rest of the family knew that their lives were forever changed after the camps they really didn’t take the time to consider that their father could never go back to being the man he was before his own personal ordeal. The travesties of thinking that imprisoning the entire Japanese population would save our nation are horrible enough. But invoking such fear in others is so much worse.

                Invoking massive fears in exactly what happened to the father in this story. When he was finally released even months after his family, he wasn’t even a resemblance of his old self. He lost the personality that the rest of his family craved. He lost his faith in people and the country in which he was so proud of. He couldn’t sleep through horrible reoccurring nightmares. And eventually he couldn’t even leave the house. “He’d get dressed and put on his coat but he could not make himself walk out the front door.” (Page 137) For I think the greatest sadness is that both the father and the rest of the family yearned to all be united again. But it could never be that way again. For in times of great tragedies there’s no hope for just going back to normal life.