Summary Of Snow Falling On Cedars By David Guterson

The novel of “Snow Falling on Cedars” by David Guterson mainly focuses on a Japanese-American fisherman who named Kabuo Miyamoto being held in a trail for murdering another fisherman, who is white and named Carl Heine Jr. The trail took place on December 6, 1954. Which is sometime after the Japanese-Americans being release from the internment camps. About a decade back from 1954, all Japanese-Americans got sent to interment camps for the outcome of the Pearl Harbor attack from the Japanese and the serious conflicts between the two countries, Japan and America. From the Pearl Harbor incident, Americans has developed a very negative attitude towards all Japanese people including the Japanese-Americans who have nothing to do with the attack. The

While Carl fell of his boat, he banged his head off his boat causing a wound on his head, putting him in unconscious mood and leaded him to death from drowning in water. Before the mystery gets resolve, Kabuo was the first person that Art Moran, a local sheriff turns to after speaking with Carl’s family. Art arrested Kabuo for finding a fishing gaff covered with blood on Kabuo’s boat, believing that it is Carl’s blood. Later on, Dr. Sterling Whitman, a hematologist testified the blood and came to a conclusion that it is human type B blood but Kabuo have type O blood. Which have busted Art’s confident for his assumption because there is only ten percent of white American males in the San Piedro Island who have blood type B. But he soon come to a realization that there is twenty percent of the Japanese-American males on that island also have type B blood. Because of the so many types of discriminations and prejudice that the country has putted on Japanese-American, Art automatically assumed the blood on the fish gaff belonged to Carl and arrested Kabuo right on the spot. If vice versa, Carl is the one that is alive and Kabuo is the dead one, Art would not automatically assume that Carl is the one that has murder Kabuo. Art might even think of reasons to defense Carl just simple because he is a white

(Carl’s father). When the two still alive, Zenhichi have been trying to buy the seven acres farmland from Carl Heine Sr. There is so much complications going on at the time for Japanese-Americans, for a few times Zenhichi was so close becoming the owner of the seven acres farmland but every time toward the happy ending, some serious events happen and interrupted the Miyamoto family to earn their ownership of the land. Sometime back in 1934 Zenhichi Miyamoto and Carl Heine Sr. came to an agreement that they will have an eight years least-to-own contract disregard to what Etta Heine (Carl’s mother) have to say because she never agree with her husband for selling the farmland to the Miyamoto family. The reason why they have to set an eight-years least-to-own contract is because during that time the U.S government has laws that prevent all Japanese born-American from owning or purchasing lands. Eight years later which is 1942, the year of all Japanese-Americans’ nightmare and also the year that Kabuo, the American-born Japanese, turn twenty years old, the legal age to own or purchase lands. Based on the contract, on the last payment, Carl Heine Sr. agrees on handing over the ownership of the seven acres farmland. By plan, the Miyamoto family is supposed to take over the farmland’s