When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

The Tortoise

In a letter that was sent to him by his father, he was asked if he had a best friend.  I believe his father asked him this question in hopes that someone was there to help him through this ordeal.  He was going to grow up faster than his father had hoped he would and it was his job to guide him through this terrible time.  His father was hoping that a male figure would take on the responsibility of teaching his son how to do things right.  He knew it was his job to perform and now he couldn’t. 

His son was reaching out to him through their letters.  Although his son did not have a best friend or a mentor as his father had hoped, he did have a pet tortoise (p. 60) which he kept at the barracks window to keep it cool at night.  Its home was a wooden box with sand with a white stone on top to prevent it from escaping.  After all, if anybody was to leave, it should be him and his family.  They did nothing wrong.  His tortoise was not given a name.  Instead, it had an I.D. number etched in its shell.  This I.D. number was the same number that was given to his family.  In a place where you are housed like animals, you do not have a name.  “After all, it is your name that identifies you as a person/human being.”  Those in charge did not want that to occur.  

In his dreams he would hear the tortoise clawing at the inside of the box.  The tortoise probably felt the same way as the boy.  He, too, would have liked to remove himself from this environment, these people, the food and the temperature.  This became home to all of them. In his return letters he did not mention any of this to his dad.  This was probably done to keep each other from losing their sanity.  If the truth were told, the sole reason they were there was because they were Japanese. 

It was very difficult for his father to accept and now he had to explain it to his son.  It was easier to keep the lie going.  A boy of this age should be playing with his friends or going to school, doing the normal things, not caged up like some animal because he is different.  How was his dad going to explain such a thing through censored mail?  How was his son to understand that his government placed him in this camp to protect themselves from people like him?  

I believe they needed to say only what needed to be said.  It was the only way to keep the lie from exposing the truth.   “We should not hide ourselves behind the mirages of ourselves.”