snow falling on cedars :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The novel Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson explores life of Japanese- Americans during the first half of the 21st century on the island of San Pierdro, a small island off the shore of Seattle. The novel opens on the trail of Kabuo Miyamoto in 1954 and focuses on his wife Hastue and the local one-armed reporter Ishmael Chambers. Later in the story Hastue and Ishmael, a white man had a secret romance in high school. Yet after the bombing at Pearl Harbor their lives will change forever. Kabuo and Hastue are forced into internment camps and Ishmael is drafted into war and is forced to fight the Japanese and losses his arm. In the internment camp Hastue is forced to forget her love and marry Kabuo who is ?right for her? because he is the same nationality. After the pains that World War II caused them they come back to San Pierdro, to start their life again. However the pains of World War II and the racial internment shadow their lives. The internment of Japanes e- Americans is not just a stain on the United States Constitution, but on the morals of America. Japanese- Americans suffered several injustices by the federal and local government and by members of their own communities that did not stop at their relocation to the desert. In order to understand the background of the book. I needed to research the attack on Pearl Harbor and other events that lead to the incarceration of American citizens.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  At the turn of the century the United Stated became to suffer from server upward trends of immigration, mainly from southern and eastern Europe, and Asia. As the American public became more concerned about these unwanted groups moved in greater numbers to America, the federal government under the Woodrow Wilson administrated Congress appointed Senator William Dillingham of Vermont to study the immigration question (Garraty 596). Two years later in 1909 Dillingham bought a 41- volume report that lead to the reducing the immigration in those unwanted regions (596). However this did not stop Asian emigrates from moving their families to the West Coast mainly in large cities like San Francisco and Seattle. Animosity against the Asian immigrants that in the San Francisco school board instituted a policy of segregating Asian children in a special school. Japan protested due to the fact of their hatred toward the Chinese. To keep good relations with the Japanese Presiden t Teddy Roosevelt and leaders for the Japanese made a ?