When the Emperor Was Divine – Conflicting Cultures

Executive Order 9066 did not only characterize those of Japanese ancestry as enemies of the United States. Beyond targeting the individual, by placing all with Japanese blood into this same category the entirety of Japanese culture was vilified. Whatever American culture one might have adopted became inconsequential; at their core, Japanese-Americans were still just Japanese in the eyes of the government and the public, and this fact was made to be a point of shame. We see this in the novel as the woman finishes packing, rolling up her "Oriental rug" (7). When the rug is rolled up, the the intricate patterns it contains and the culture expressed therein become concealed by layer on top of layer of more and more rug. Additionally, the woman removes the "tiny bonsai tree" (7) from the inside of her home, and takes it out into the yard. Interestingly though, she does so still with great care for the tree's wellbeing, placing it "beneath the eaves where it would not get too much shade or too much sun but just the right amount of each" (7). By continuing to care about the tree and to protect its survival, the woman shows that she will not let her Japanese culture die, even if it cannot be present in her life anymore.

At the same time as the woman is hiding away her Japanese culture, she is making efforts to preserve or to showcase her son's American side. She unpins the "One World One War map" (7) that hangs on his wall, a map specifically designed to propagandize America's economic and military might during the war. She packs his "painted wooden Indian" (7), a symbol of Manifest Destiny and America's conquest of the western North American continent. She preserves his "Joe Palooka comic books" (7), the quintessential element of a distinctly American childhood in the 1940s. 

The differences in how the woman treats these different cultural symbols shows her attitude towards each culture. She takes pride in her Japanese culture despite being pushed to shame herself for it, and embraces the American as a defense mechanism in the face of her branding as an enemy of the United States.