When the Emperor Was Divine (12 page)

Every once in a while we'd try bringing him his hat and inviting him to come out with us for a walk but he just smiled and waved us away. “You people go on ahead,” he said.

In the evening he often went to bed early, at seven, right after supper—
Might as well get the day over with
—but he slept poorly and woke often from the same recurring dream: It was five minutes past curfew and he was trapped outside, in the world, on the wrong side of the fence. “I've got to get back,” he'd wake up shouting.

“You're home now,” our mother would remind him. “It's all right. You can stay.”

THE FIRST SIGNS of spring: mild days, buds in the fruit trees, no more long lists of the dead. The mothers were all back in the kitchen now. The last of the fathers on our block—those who could—had come home, they were safe. The sun was in its place. There, up above us, but not too high. Strength was slowly returning. Speech was beginning to come back. In the school yard. At the park. On the street. They were calling out to us now. Not many of them. Just a few.

At first we pretended not to hear them, but after a while we could no longer resist. We turned around and nodded, we smiled, then continued on our way.

For two weeks in April the magnolia trees blossomed with pale white flowers and the skies were blue and clear. Purple hyacinths and narcissus came up in the garden, and tall stalks of mint, and every evening, at dusk, we wandered out into the yard and watched the starlings gathering in the trees. At night we slept with the windows wide open, and in our dreams we could hear singing and laughter and the endless turning of the leaves in the wind and in the morning, when we woke, for one brief moment we could almost forget we had ever been away.

In May, when the heat settled in and roses everywhere burst into bloom, we wandered the streets every day after school in search of the rosebush our mother had once planted in our front yard. At first we saw it wherever we looked—in the Gilroys' front yard, and the Myers', and lying low among the rhododendrons in the prize-winning garden of the Misses O'Grady—but upon closer inspection none of these rosebushes turned out to be ours. They were too big, or too small, or their petals too pale, and after a while we gave up and turned our attention to other things. But we never stopped believing that somewhere out there, in some stranger's backyard, our mother's rosebush was blossoming madly, wildly, pressing one perfect red flower after another out into the late afternoon light.

CONFESSION

Everything you have heard is true. I was wearing my bathrobe, my slippers, the night your men took me away. At the station they asked me questions.
Talk to us
, they said. The room was small and bare. It had no windows. The lights were bright. They left them on for days. What more can I tell you? My feet were cold. I was tired. I was thirsty. I was scared. So I did what I had to do. I talked.

All right, I said. I admit it. I lied. You were right. You were always right. It was me. I did it. I poisoned your reservoirs. I sprinkled your food with insecticide. I sent my peas and potatoes to market full of arsenic. I planted sticks of dynamite alongside your railroads. I set your oil wells on fire. I scattered mines across the entrance to your harbors. I spied on your airfields. I spied on your naval yards. I spied on your neighbors. I spied on you— you get up at six, you like bacon and eggs, you love baseball, you take your coffee with cream, your favorite color is blue. I crept into your house while you were away and sullied your wife.
Wait, wait,
she said,
don't go.
I touched your daughters—they smiled in their sleep. I smothered your firstborn son—he did not struggle. I stole your last bag of sugar. I took a swig from your best bottle of brandy. I pulled out the nails from your white picket fence and sold them to the enemy to melt down and make into bullets. I gave that same enemy your defense maps for free.
The Boeing assembly plant is here.
The oil refinery, there. “X” marks the spot where they make the
camouflage nets.
I sent him aerial photographs of your major coastal cities. I radioed to his submarines the location of your troop ships. I leaned out my second-story window and signaled to his aviators with my red paper lantern.
Come on over!
I left my lights on during the blackout. I went out into the yard and tossed up a few flares just to make sure he knew where to find you.
Drop
that bomb right here, right here where I'm standing!
I cut arrow-shaped swaths through my tomato fields to guide him to his next target.
Straight ahead to the air force base!
I told him all about you.
Tall and handsome. Big eyes. Long
nose. Broad shoulders. Perfect teeth. Nice smile. Firm handshake. Solid family man. A joiner. Member of the Elks. The
Kiwanis. The Rotary. The local Chamber of Commerce. Mows
his lawn every Saturday and goes to church on Sundays. Pays
his bills on time. Enjoys the occasional night out with the boys.
Wife stays home and takes care of the kids.
I revealed to him your worst secrets.
Short attention span. Doesn't always
remember to take out the garbage. Sometimes talks with his
mouth full.

Who am I? You know who I am. Or you think you do. I'm your florist. I'm your grocer. I'm your porter. I'm your waiter. I'm the owner of the dry-goods store on the corner of Elm. I'm the shoeshine boy. I'm the judo teacher. I'm the Buddhist priest. I'm the Shinto priest. I'm the Right Reverend Yoshimoto.
So prease to
meet you.
I'm the general manager at Mitsubishi. I'm the dishwasher at the Golden Pagoda. I'm the janitor at the Claremont Hotel. I'm the laundryman. I'm the nurseryman. I'm the fisherman. I'm the ranch hand. I'm the farm hand. I'm the peach picker. I'm the pear picker. I'm the lettuce packer. I'm the oyster planter. I'm the cannery worker. I'm the chicken sexer.
And I know a
healthy young rooster when I see one!
I'm the grinning fat man in the straw hat selling strawberries by the side of the road. I'm the president of the Cherry Blossom Society. I'm the secretary of the Haiku Association. I'm a card-carrying member of the Bonsai Club.
Such a delightful little people! Everything so small and pretty!
I'm the one you call Jap. I'm the one you call Nip. I'm the one you call Slits. I'm the one you call Slopes. I'm the one you call Yellowbelly. I'm the one you call Gook. I'm the one you don't see at all—we all look alike. I'm the one you see everywhere—we're taking over the neighborhood. I'm the one you look for under your bed every night before you go to sleep.
Just checking,
you say. I'm the one you dream of all night long—we're marching ten abreast down Main Street. I'm your nightmare— we're bivouacking tonight on your newly mowed front lawn. I'm your worst fear—you saw what we did in Manchuria, you remember Nanking, you can't get Pearl Harbor out of your mind.

I'm the slant-eyed sniper in the trees.

I'm the saboteur in the shrubs.

I'm the stranger at the gate.

I'm the traitor in your own backyard.

I'm your houseboy.

I'm your cook.

I'm your gardener.

And I've been living here, quietly, beside you, for years, just waiting for Tojo to flash me the high sign.

So go ahead and lock me up. Take my children. Take my wife. Freeze my assets. Seize my crops. Search my office. Ransack my house. Cancel my insurance. Auction off my business. Hand over my lease. Assign me a number. Inform me of my crime.
Too short, too dark, too
ugly, too proud.
Put it down in writing—
is nervous in conversation, always laughs loudly at the wrong time, never laughs
at all
—and I'll sign on the dotted line.
Is treacherous and
cunning, is ruthless, is cruel.
And if they ask you someday what it was I most wanted to say, please tell them, if you would, it was this:

I'm sorry.

There. That's it. I've said it. Now can I go?

A NOTE ON SOURCES

The author gratefully acknowledges the following works for their help in writing this book:
The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans During World War II,
by Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis;
A Fence Away From Freedom: Japanese
Americans and World War II,
by Ellen Levine;
Citizen 13660,
by Miné Okubo;
Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American Internment at
Topaz, by Sandra C. Taylor; and Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a
Japanese-American Family
, by Yoshiko Uchida.

Julie Otsuka

WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE

Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. She is a graduate of Yale University and received her M.F.A. from Columbia. She lives in New York City.

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 2003

Copyright © 2002 by Julie Otsuka, Inc.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The chapter “Evacuation Order No. 19” appeared, in slightly different
form, in
Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops 1998,
edited by
Carol Shields, John Kulka, and Natalie Danford.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Otsuka, Julie.
When the emperor was divine: a novel / by Julie Otsuka.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Japanese Americans—Evacuation and relocation, 1942–1945—Fiction.
2. World War, 1939–1945—California—Fiction. 3. Japanese American
families—Fiction. 4. Concentration camps—Fiction.
5. California—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3615.T88 W48 2002
813'.6—dc21 2002020814

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eISBN: 978-0-307-43021-2

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