When the Emperor Was DivineWhen the Emperor Was Divine

On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her house, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans, they have been reclassified virtually overnight as enemy aliens, and they are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert. Their story is told from five flawlessly realized points of view and it conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience.