Otsuka’s character, “the girl,” narrates the journey from assembly centers to Topaz as the family travels on the train. Her wide-eyed observation of the passage seizes on many aspects of Americanness—wild mustangs, popular American tunes, billboard signs, all while being watched over by soldiers. When they finally arrive at Topaz, in Utah,

she saw telephone poles and barbed-wire fences. She saw soldiers. And everything she saw she saw through a cloud of fine white dust…He pressed the scarf to his face and took the girl’s hand and together they stepped out of the bus and into the blinding white glare of the desert. ("When the Emperor Was Divine", p. 48)