Snow Falling On Cedars by David Gutterson

Essay by allysonsaysHigh School, 12th grade April 2004

download word file, 9 pages 4.3

Downloaded 67 times

Ismael Chambers: An honest and hard-working man, Ismael brought forth evidence in the murder trial of Carl Heine that proved Kabuo Miyamoto to be innocent. The loss of his arm during the war did not prevent him from continuing the publication of his father's newspaper, The San Piedro Review after his death, let alone many other activities. Although never married, Ismael, as a young child fell in love with Hatsue Imada and was heart broken when he found out all Japanese families were being transported to the internment camps. After receiving a letter from Hatsue stating that she could never love him, Ismael became, at first, very resentful towards the Japanese, although he got over it as he got older.

"It seemed right to me, it seemed like getting married, like being married, like you and me were married. Like the only kind of wedding we could ever have."

"That f***ing g*ddamn Jap b***h."

Kabuo Miyamoto: Respectable and proud fisherman Kabuo Miyamoto was accused of the murder of Carl Heine in which he was found innocent from evidence introduced by Ismael Chambers. As a young boy, Kabuo was thoroughly trained in the art of kendo by his strawberry cropper father, which he used in the war a few years later. Returning home from battle, he sought to repurchase the seven acres of his family's land.

"...he sat proudly upright with a rigid grace, his palms placed softly on the defendant's table-the posture of a man who has detached himself insofar as this possible at his own trial."

"He had meant to project to the jurors his innocence, he'd wanted them to see that his spirit was haunted, he sat upright in the hope that his desperate composure might reflect the shape of his soul."

Hatsue Miyamoto (Imada): Wife of accused...