The following excerpt “from snow falling on cedars” takes place in an American relocation camp shortly after the attack on the pearl harbor in 1941. This story has some key aspects in it such as letting go of your young ones, coming of age and roles that you must take on with new age and lastly the differences between ethnicity. Fujiko and Hatsue Imada are placed in an American relocation camp, while they are in there Hatsue is interacting with an American boy named Ishmael chambers. They would send each other letters and when Fujiko finds out about this she rips the letter from Ishmael in half and this symbolizes that she does not give consent of Hatsue talking with an American boy simply because of his race. fujiko does not trust the Americans after they placed all Japanese people in camps, also she does not want her precious daughter to be hurt. Fujiko is having the struggle which many mothers have, this is the struggle of letting her daughter be her own woman Hatsue is eighteen and wants to be able to make her own decisions. …show more content…
Hatsue is eighteen years old and with coming of age you get more responsibilities. in our modern society, eighteen is the age where you become an independent adult and make your own decisions. As we near the end of the excerpt we see that fujiko and hatsue are both realizing what needs to be done hatsue is realizing that ishmael is not the man for her and they were childish together and she must straighten things out with him and fujiko is realizing that hatsue is not her baby girl anymore she has grown into an adult and is ready to control her own life, this is symbolized by fujiko ripping her daughters letter and telling her “ write your own letter, tell him the truth about things, put all of this in your history. Tell him the truth so you can move forward, put this Hajukin boy away