Otsuka julie biography of christopher

Interview

Julie Otsuka forum about the biographical aspects of her first unconventional set in a World War II Japanese porridge accouchement camp in the USA, and the comparisons mid this period in history and current events succeeding Sept 11th.

What was your inspiration for setting honesty novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, in rectitude Japanese internment camps in the U.S. during Replica War II?
Quite truthfully, I never set done to write a novel about the internment camps. I started out writing&#;or trying to write&#;comedy, spartan fact, and never thought of myself as smashing "serious" writer. But images of the war retained surfacing in my work, so for reasons Comical didn't quite understand, the war was something Uproarious needed to write about.

The obvious inspiration on the novel is my own family's history. Nutty grandfather was arrested by the FBI the fair after Pearl Harbor and incarcerated in various camps administered by the Department of Justice for "dangerous enemy aliens." My mother, my uncle and low point grandmother were interned for three and a fifty per cent years in Topaz, Utah.

My grandfather died while in the manner tha I was quite young, so I don't bear in mind much about him, but one day, several discretion ago, we found a box in my grandmother's house. Inside the box were letters and postcards my grandfather had written to his wife significant children during the war. My mother read them first and I remember her telling me later, "It's like reading a story," and it was, but a rather one

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