Chapter IV: In a Stranger's Backyard

1. Who is narrating this chapter?
2. What has changed while the family was away?
3. What has happened to the family’s furniture and to the money they were supposed to get for renting their house?
4. Why doesn’t the narrator tell us what words have been written on the wall? What earlier episode in the book does this recall?
5. Why does the family choose to sleep in the back room? What sort of things have happened to other people coming back from the camp? Who might be saying the words printed in italics on page 112?
6. How quickly do the children and their mother adapt to freedom? What habits of their internment do they still cling to?
7. How do the family’s neighbors treat them on their return, and how does this compare to their behavior earlier? On the rare occasions that someone actually asks where they’ve been, why does the mother respond so vaguely?
8. How much money is the family given on its release? What is the significance of this sum?
9. How does the narrator describe the men coming back from the war? What do the fragments of dialogue tell us about them? What is the effect of these stories of Japanese atrocities? Does it lessen your sympathy for the family? How do these stories make the children feel?
10. What measures do the children take to fit in following their return? How does their new behavior correspond to popular stereotypes of Japanese Americans?
11. “If we did something wrong, we made sure to say excuse me (excuse me for looking at you, excuse me for sitting here, excuse me for coming back). If we did something terribly wrong we immediately said we were sorry (I’m sorry I touched your arm. I didn’t mean to, it was an accident, I didn’t see it resting there so quietly, so beautifully, so perfectly, so irresistibly, on the edge of the desk. I lost my balance and brushed against it by mistake, I was standing too close, I wasn’t watching where I was going, somebody pushed me from behind, I never wanted to touch you, I have always wanted to touch you, I will never touch you again, I promise, I swear…)” [pp. 122-23] Are these things the narrator is actually saying or only thinking? Who is being addressed? How does the emotional tone of the paragraph change as it progresses?
12. Why do the children keep seeing their old possessions around the neighborhood, and why does their father appear among them? Are we meant to take this literally or as an ironic metaphor? In what ways does this passage echo earlier false sightings of the father?
13. Why does the mother take a job? What reason does she give for turning down the job in a department store? What does she say are the secrets of being a successful housecleaner?
14. How does the narrator describe the father? How does this description compare to earlier ones?
15. How has the father changed during his incarceration? How do the children seem to feel about these changes?
16. Toward the end of this chapter Otsuka writes: “Speech was beginning to come back. In the school yard. 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.” Who is calling out? What is it that the narrators are unable to resist? Do you find this passage hopeful or ominous?

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Trachtenberg, Peter. Teacher's Guide: When the Emperor Was Divine. NY: Anchor Books, 2003. 16 March 2007 .

Chapter III: When the Emperor Was Divine

1. What is the significance of this chapter’s title?
2. Why does the boy keep thinking that he sees his father?
3. When the boy thinks, “For it was true, they all looked alike,” [p. 49] he seems to be echoing something he has heard elsewhere. Where might he have heard this?
4. What is the significance of the things the boy hears through the walls of his barracks? Sayonara is, of course, Japanese, but what language is Auf wiederseh’n, and what is the irony of hearing it in this setting?
5. Why does the boy’s mother warn him never to say the Emperor’s name out loud? Why does he later say it to himself, and why does he dream about the Emperor’s ships?
6. In what different ways do the three characters spend their time in camp? How does this reflect their characters?
7. What is Mrs. Kato’s predicament, and how might it symbolize the common condition of the internees?
8. How reliable is the information the girl gives her brother? Where else have we seen her make authoritative-sounding statements that may not necessarily be accurate?
9. The letters the father sends the boy have been censored by an official. What things does the boy leave out of his letters back? Why might he do this?
10. What sort of things does the boy remember about his father, and what do they reveal about him?
11. Why does the mother fear that her husband may no longer recognize her?
12. When the boy asks his sister what time it is, what is the irony of her answer? Where else in the book do characters lose track of time?
13. What happens to the inmates who sign up to harvest crops?
14. What is the significance of the boy’s dream about doors? Where are Peleliu and Saipan? What are the claws the boy hears scrabbling, and why might their sound be growing fainter?
15. What detail of the father’s arrest does the boy find most troubling? What eventually makes him feel better?
16. What is the significance of the objects the boy’s mother destroyed?
17. What does the father mean by, “It’s better to bend than to break?” [p. 78] Compare this to the mother thinking, “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” [p. 99] How useful or relevant does this advice seem in the context of the novel? What does it suggest about these people’s characters and values? Do they actually abide by these sayings?
18. Why does the girl make the boy turn away while she undresses? In what other ways does her behavior change during this time?
19. Why does the boy feel responsible for the tortoise’s death? Do you think he is? His sister says, “We’ll resurrect him,” but is she just joking? Does the boy believe her?
20. The boy is particularly bothered because his father didn’t look back at him from the car in which the FBI men took him away. What significance do you think he places on this? What alternative reason might the father have had for not turning?
21. How does the mother change in the course of her internment? What memory seems especially affecting to her?
22. Why is the family in the next barracks sent to Tule Lake? What is the irony of punishing people imprisoned as enemy aliens for refusing to pledge allegiance to the nation that’s imprisoned them?
23. What is it that the boy sees blooming inside a peach tin? How is this connected to his vision of the tortoise? Do you think this vision is real or a fantasy?
24. Why is one of the inmates shot? What hypotheses are given for his seemingly reckless behavior?
25. On page 104 the boy imagines his father returning by various means (horse, bike, train), and dressed in various outfits (a blue pinstriped suit, a red kimono). What is the significance of these different guises? What, in particular, is the meaning of the pearl?

Political Cartoon Analysis

Directions: Analyze the cartoons below in terms of its meaning related to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and Korematsu v. United States.

1. What do you see in the cartoon? Make a list. Include objects, people, and any characteristics that seem to be exaggerated.
2. Which of the items on the list from Question 1 are symbols? What does each symbol stand for?
3. What is happening in the cartoon?
4. What is the cartoonist's message?
5. Doyou agree or disagree with the message? Explain your answer.

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Questions: "Working with Primary Documents: Executive Order 9066." Landmark Supreme Court Cases: Korematsu v. United States. 16 March 2007 <"http://www.landmarkcases.org/korematsu/primarydocuments.html>.

Chapter II: Train

1. Whose point of view dominates this chapter? What clues does the author use to indicate this shift?
2. How much time has passed since the family left its home and what has happened in the interim?
3. Why have the girl’s shoes gone unpolished since spring?
4. What sights draw her attention as she gazes out the train window?
5. Why does the soldier tell her to pull her shades down?
6. What might account for the boy’s newfound interest in horses? How do the grownups around him treat this interest? What about their responses might be confusing to him?
7. When the girl asks Ted Ishimoto if he is a rich man, he says “Not anymore.” [p. 33] What might account for his answer?
8. Do you think the girl’s story about her father is true? Why or why not, and if it isn’t true what might be her reason for telling it? Why does she later tell Ted that her father never writes to her?
9. What is striking about the boy saying that he forgot his umbrella? Is he telling a deliberate untruth or is he forgetting what actually happened? At what other points in the book do the characters suffer lapses of memory or remember events falsely?
10. Why might the boy draw his father inside a square?
11. What is Tanforan and what happened there? In what different ways do different characters remember it?
12. During the night the train crosses the Great Salt Lake. Given that the girl is asleep at the time, who is observing this crossing? And what might this narrator mean by “the sound of the lake was inside her” [pp. 46-7]?

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Trachtenberg, Peter. Teacher's Guide: When the Emperor Was Divine. NY: Anchor Books, 2003. 16 March 2007 .

Document Analysis: Exective Order 9066

Directions: Click here to read Executive Order 9066. Then, answer each question below and include the exact language from Executive Order 9066 in which the answer is found. Post responses to your blog!

1. What was the reasoning used to justify the issuance of Executive Order No. 9066?
2. Under what authority did President Roosevelt issue Executive Order No. 9066?
3. To whom did President Roosevelt designate authority to carry out the evacuation?
4. Give specific examples of the powers authorized by the President to be used in carrying out the Order.

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Questions: "Working with Primary Documents: Executive Order 9066." Landmark Supreme Court Cases: Korematsu v. United States. 16 March 2007 <"http://www.landmarkcases.org/korematsu/primarydocuments.html>.

Cartoon: "Equal Protection: Race." Maxwell School of Syracuse Univeristy. 17 March 2007 <http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/plegal/scales/korematsu.gif>

Chapter I: Evacuation Order No. 19

1. Whose point of view dominates this chapter?
2. What does the woman see in the window? Otsuka tells us that “she wrote down a few words.” [p. 3] What do they turn out to be?
3. How much time passes between the appearance of the notice and the events of the rest of the chapter? What do we learn has happened during that time?
4. What items does the woman buy at the hardware store? What does she intend to do with them? Why might Mr. Lundy keep insisting that she can pay him later, and why is she in turn so determined to pay him now?
5. Which of the family possessions do the woman and her children pack; which things do they leave behind? What do their choices tell you about them? Discuss the significance of the bonsai tree, the reproduction of “The Gleaners,” and the portrait of Princess Elizabeth.
6. Otsuka describes the woman as someone “who did not always follow the rules.” Where in this novel do we see her doing this?
7. Why does the woman kill White Dog? How does she explain its disappearance to the children? Do they believe her? Where else do we see her lying to the?
8. Why is the boy so insistent on keeping his hat on?
9. The girl worries about her looks, noting that “people were staring.” [p. 15] What might be the real reason they were staring at her?
10. Why does the girl ask her mother to make her practice for her piano lesson, and why, when her mother refuses, does she practice anyway?
11. At what point in the evening’s routines does the woman begin to cry? What is the significance of “La donna é mobile,” a song whose title means “Woman Is Fickle”?
12. Discuss the significance of the chapter’s final sentence: “Then they would pin their identification numbers to their collars and grab their suitcases and climb up onto the bus and go to wherever it was they had to go.” [p. 22] Why is the author vague about their destination

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Trachtenberg, Peter. Teacher's Guide: When the Emperor Was Divine. NY: Anchor Books, 2003. 16 March 2007 .

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