When the Emperor was Divine (First Post)

     When I dove into this book I was coming in with very minimal knowledge of the history.  I new the story of how the Japanese Americans got placed in internment camps and many of them lost their old lives they had before.  Including there reputation, friends, and property.  When I read the first chapter it was the first time actually reading about a fictional character and how her life continued until she was sent to go live in an internment camp with her family.  The first chapter is the thoughts and the events that had to take place before the initial leave.
     So far I can see that there is a woman who has a daughter and a son.  She has a husband however, he is in jail during the scene in the first chapter.  Woman seems to be calm and collected.  She wears neat clothes and has what was conceived at the time as a normal middle class life.  Then as we read deeper we see that the women has to make choices and act on certain things that she does not want to do, but must for her families sake.  She must pack, stay calm, and keep the kids naive to what is going on around them.
     The actions that stood out the most and had the most impact on her character was the getting rid of the animals.  She gave the cat to stay with someone else, killed the dog, and let the bird loose outside.  She must do this because she knows she can not bring them with her and they would only suffer without the family there.  Also, the kids have affection for the animals and its better to say they ran away then to say that they are dead, or starving at home because they aren't there to feed the animals.  I also think that the getting rid of the animals was symbolic.  I think by giving the cat to a neighbor it was as if she was trying to keep a part of her there in that neighborhood.  She doesn't want to give up the life she has and she wants to leave a "mark."  By killing the dog it is symbolizing how she is killing off her old life.  She knows that she can never return to her old life so she must "kill it" so that she is in less pain when she has to leave it and so her kids aren't phased by this ordeal.  Lastly, the bird I think is the most symbolic.   After leaving a piece of herself there in the old life and killing it off with the dog she now has to let it go. She releases the bird into the night and is trying to let it go.  At first the bird won't fly away and sticks around.  This is as if saying it wasn't easy and she had a hard time doing it, but the bird eventually flew away like the family must do the next day.
     The mother is distressed by the end of this chapter and after the kids are in bed she lets out all her emotions from what the day had put upon her.  This scene is showing that she is human and this ordeal is not something she is easily taking.  However, at the same time it is showing that she is strong and willing to put on a kind of composure to keep her kids happy and unaware.