Wartime Memories

Table of Contents

About the Writer About the Book Before Reading the Book (Motivating Activities) Discussion Starters Writing Prompts Words to Know/Vocabulary Places to Know/History & Social Science Characterization/Literary Concept Essay Topics Assessment Options Related Topics/Additional Resources Standards Correlations

WORDS TO KNOW/VOCABULARY

Prepare students for this activity by reviewing how to clarify for meaning when confronting unfamiliar words or phrases within the context of the novel When The Emperor Was Divine. Have them maintain a vocabulary journal as they read the novel, using and filling out a chart such as this one.

PLACES/EVENTS TO KNOW (HISTORY/SOCIAL SCIENCE)

• Executive Order 9066
• Pearl Harbor
• Berkeley, California
• Utah
• New Mexico

LITERARY CONCEPT: CHARACTERIZATION

Characterization refers to the methods writers use to develop characters. Writers may use any of all of the following methods of characterization:

• Description of a character's physical appearance
• A character's speech, thoughts, feelings, or actions
• What other characters think and say about this character
• The narrator's direct comments about a character

Use a chart like the one below to note the characterization methods used in When The Emperor Was Divine.

CHARACTER:

ESSAY TOPICS

1. Details regarding setting, characters, plot, and conflict bring a story to life. Select three quotes from the section, chapter, book that demonstrate this use of detail. Explain how your selections contribute to overall character development or plot.
2. Do you believe that history would ever repeat itself; could American citizens ever suffer internment? Why or why not?
3. Describe the aftermath of the family's internment. How have they changed? How does America regard them?

4. Setting is defined as the time and place of the action in a literary work. An understanding of the setting of When The Emperor Was Divine is necessary to an understanding of the book. Important factors to consider include:

• The historical period

• Western locations

• Social political climate (decades of anti-Asian sentiment)
5. Select one of the characters and write about how the book's setting affects and changes the character as the story progresses. Use quotes, descriptions, and examples to elaborate your ideas. In your paper, discuss the techniques/writing style the Julie Otsuka uses to make the setting vivid and real.
6. When the boy wonders why he's in camp, he worries that "he'd done something horribly, terribly wrong. . ." Write about what this passage reveals about the effects of racism on children. What does it reveal about the way children try to make sense of their experiences?
7. When the family is reunited with their father, they don't know how to react. “Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father's place.” Explain how the father has been changed by his experiences and how his changes his family forever.
8. After the father returns home, he never once discusses the years he'd been away, and his children don't ask. "We didn't want to know. . . . All we wanted to do, now that we were back in the world, was forget" [p. 133]. Explain why the children feel this way. In what ways does the novel fight against this desire to forget?

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