When the Emperor was Divine

Each year, the university selects a book for the incoming class to read. There's a program during Orientation where faculty and staff have an opportunity to lead a small(ish) group and discuss the book's content and its relevance to our students, not only within the context of their lives as young adults, but also as students within the university.

I read the book earlier this summer and attended a brown bag luncheon today with several of my colleagues to discuss the book and our own thoughts. If you're unfamiliar with the book, it's set in the 1940s and tells the story of a Japanese-American family (mother, son, and daughter) who live in California and are sent to an internment camp after Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and World War II began. The family's patriarch was taken by authorities late in the night for questioning and is separated from the family throughout the duration of their experience in the internment camp. The characters in the book are never referred to by a proper name, thus remaining anonymous, and the story is told from the perspective of the mother and her little boy and girl.

During our conversation today, I couldn't help but think about how these Japanese-Americans must have felt during that time, families ripped apart, forced to leave behind their homes and live in inhumane conditions, dehumanized, and their human dignity destroyed, all out of fear. And I started to wonder how far we (as people) have come in the last 70 years. And also how far we maybe haven't come. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Americans treated all Japanese-Americans as terrorists. We stereotyped them, mistreated them, disrespected them, and watched as innocent bystanders when they (our neighbors) were led from their homes scared and afraid and forced to live under guarded isolation. Reminds me a lot a time not too long ago in our history when my generation was not only alive, we were young adults. And no, we didn't send Muslim Americans to internment campus. Why not? Because we learned a lesson from history? Because our humanity had evolved? I don't know the answer to that...

A colleague said while we didn't go so far as to send Muslim Americans to internment camps, in a way, we did everything but. And it gave me food for thought. And my role in the whole affair. Advocate? Proponent? Ally? Bystander?

I recommend the book if you haven't had a chance to check it out. It's a quick read but the message is one you won't quickly forget.

Cheers.