Julie Otsuka, the author of “When the Emperor Was Divine,” was born in Palo Alto, Calif., and now lives in New York. “When the Emperor Was Divine” is her first novel. A State Hornet staff member had the chance to interview Otsuka regarding her novel and her experiences as a writer. Otsuka’s novel has been chosen for this year’s One Book. Those interested can visit www.csus.edu/onebook for other events and information regarding Julie Otsuka and the One Book Program. State Hornet:: What were your inspirations for the novel? Otsuka: “Well, I had heard a little bit about what my mother and her family had gone through in the war. They were all interned in the camps. It kind of crept up on me. When I started writing it was always humorous stories, so I had never written about the war until my second year at Columbia. All of a sudden this story seemed to come out of nowhere, which was the first chapter of the novel. The stuff had been simmering in the background for a long time – the war material, but I don’t think it really occurred to me to write about my mother and her family’s story until I was a little bit older.” SH: How were the characters developed in your story? Otsuka: “They were invented. They’re mine. They don’t resemble real life counterparts at all. The experiences they went through are probably similar to what my family and what many families went through during the war, but their personalities are really, they’re mine.” SH: Did you have to do a lot of research for this novel? Otsuka: “I did. I read a lot of history books and I looked at newspapers from the 1940s, like the San Francisco Examiner, The Chronicle, and The Berkeley Gazette just to get a flavor of the times. I looked at a lot of photographs of the camps, so yeah I did. I did a lot because I realized I knew a lot less than I thought I did about the camps.” SH: Is there any specific tone? Otsuka: “I think I wanted to tell the story very quietly. It’s an awful enough story as it is already. We all know that what happened was unpleasant and there’s no reason to hit the reader over the head with the awfulness of that experience, so I just wanted to tell the story very quietly so that the reader would have to lean in and listen. ” SH: What would you want readers to take away from the story? Otsuka: “I don’t really prescribe what the reader should take away. Really, whatever the reader takes away is fine by me because everybody brings something different. For some readers, this may bring up memories of their own experiences, especially if they came from someplace else outside of America. It depends on your background and what it is that you and your family have gone through. For those who don’t know much about the camps, and I’m still kind of surprised when I travel how many children aren’t taught in their history classes about what happened in World War II to the Japanese Americans, but in that case, good for them to learn a little bit about what it was that happened. I just want that experience to be real for the reader.” SH: What is your favorite part of the book and why? Otsuka: “I think it’s the middle part at the camp. I identify most with that character – the boy. Part of me, psychologically, can really relate with that age of seven or eight. He’s just a magical thinker. He’s a little confused. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. He thinks, somehow, it’s his fault. That he’s done something wrong, which is why he’s been sent away. I can relate with this sense of yearning and longing. I felt like the mother would be okay. The girl’s kind of tough and she would be alright. But with the boy, I felt like I needed to take care of him.” SH: If you could start all over, would you do anything differently?

Otsuka: “There’s only one thing I would do differently. Basically, my philosophy is whatever you put out there in the world is not going to be perfect. Just do the best job you can at that time, which is what I did. I always try to get my historical details right.t5 But there is this scene, in that middle chapter, where the boy imagines he’s flying in a plane over the Philippines. He ejects out of the plane and parachutes down to the island and meets MacArthur in some fantasy. But I learned from a former fighter pilot that was in World War II, who was in one of the audiences where I was speaking, that planes didn’t have ejection seats at that time. So I would change that. It’s little details like that. If you’re writing historical fiction, you have to get your facts right because something like that will catch up with you.

Katrina Tupper can be reached at [email protected]