When the Emperor Was Divine: Chapter 2 Questions

1. Whose point of view dominates this chapter? What clues does the author use to indicate this shift? It changes into the Japanese-American girl’s point of view and it starts off by giving a description of her.
2. How much time has passed since the family left its home and what has happened in the interim? ----Several weeks; they were riding on the train heading to Utah.
3. Why have the girl’s shoes gone unpolished since spring? ----She’s been on the train and at another internment camp for months.
4. What sights draw her attention as she gazes out the train window? ---- A church, horses, and the lake(Intermittin)
5. Why does the soldier tell her to pull her shades down? ----So the people in town will not be able to see that there were Japanese-Americans on the train.
6. What might account for the boy’s newfound interest in horses? How do the grownups around him treat this interest? What about their responses might be confusing to him? ----He’s spent lots of time in the horse stable; they find it amusing; some say that they want him to grow up and be a strong “American boy”, but he already thinks that he is American-born.
7. When the girl asks Ted Ishimoto if he is a rich man, he says “Not anymore.” [p. 33] What might account for his answer? --- He’s had to give up his money.
8. Do you think the girl’s story about her father is true? Why or why not, and if it isn’t true what might be her reason for telling it? Why does she later tell Ted that her father never writes to her? ----I think they are true because the situation that he’s been in seems threatening; she wants people to feel sorry for her.
9. What is striking about the boy saying that he forgot his umbrella? Is he telling a deliberate untruth or is he forgetting what actually happened? At what other points in the book do the characters suffer lapses of memory or remember events falsely? ----He really didn’t pack it because it was too big and would not fit; he’s forgetting about what actually happened.
10. Why might the boy draw his father inside a square?----His father was locked up in a jail cell.
11.What is Tanforan and what happened there? In what different ways do different characters remember it? ----They were prisoners for a long time; some remember the temperatures while others remember the visuals.
12. During the night the train crosses the Great Salt Lake. Given that the girl is asleep at the time, who is observing this crossing? And what might this narrator mean by “the sound of the lake was inside her” [pp. 46-7]?----The boy; although she was asleep, she could still feel the lake.