Snow Falling on Cedars begins in the winter of 1954 with the trial of Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese-American man who faces the charge of murder in the death of Carl Heine. (Carl, a local fisherman, leaves behind a wife and three children.) The jury wears an impassive expression as Judge Llewellyn Fielding presides. The trial occurs in the Island Country Courthouse located on San Piedro Island in the Puget Sound, and the narrative reveals Kabuo's unreadable face as he contemplates the snow falling over the cedars. He thinks of the scene in the window as "infinitely beautiful" (2), largely because the basement cell in which he has been imprisoned is windowless.

The courthouse is located in Amity Harbor, the only town on the island. Out-of-town newspapermen flock into the courtroom to cover the trial, and Ishmael Chambers, a local reporter, age 31, observes their indolent, jaded behavior. He prefers not to be like them. Ishmael, a war veteran with only one arm, remembers how he and Kabuo had gone to high school together. Narrative suspense builds when Ishmael encounters Hatsue, Kabuo's wife. When she cries for him to go away, the suggestion of an intimacy between them is unmistakable.

The prosecutor, Alvin Hooks, calls the first witness. Art Moran, the county sheriff, testifies about the morning of September 16, when he and his deputy Abel Martinson saw a fishing boat floating adrift on its side. Together, Art and Abel reached the boat and discovered Carl's body drowned in his fishing net. As they dragged the body out of the net, Abel discovered a wound to the left side of the head: part of the skull had been crushed.

Nels Gudmundsson, the defense attorney, age 79 and blind in his left eye, cross-examines the sheriff and asks him to describe the weather on the night of Carl's death. Art responds that it was foggy. Nels then leads him to describe the batteries found on the boat: a D-6 down in the well, a dead D-8 spare, and another D-6 that had been jammed in to fit. On Kabuo's boat, Art later found two D-6s, but no spare.

Concluding his cross-examination, Nels parts with a final question regarding the dead man's weight. Art states that Carl had been 235 pounds, stiff, and very heavy. Nels takes the opportunity to create an uncertainty about whether or not Art and Abel might not have, while freeing the body, done some accidental injury to the head. Conceding, Art says that it is possible but unlikely.

Analysis

This carefully constructed narrative opens with a trial. That the accused is a Japanese-American while the dead man is a white fisherman suggests a tension in the island community. Kabuo, the accused, leaving a strong impression on his observers, causes the reader to wonder: is he really guilty? Nothing in the description of Kabuo offers a definitive answer, and the author intends the facts in the early part of the narrative to be readable in two ways: as guilt or as innocence.

Kabuo, in watching the snow fall, meditates upon what we know to be the title of the book. "Snow falling on cedars" gestures toward a traditional Japanese poetic aesthetic, which distills natural images to provoke an emotional experience. In the case of "snow falling on cedars," the emotional response, as green is made white in the midst of the winter season, is serene and sorrowful. The action of the snow echoes a covering over, a burial, erasure, or purification, further indicating the variety of feelings that are perhaps within Kabuo himself, as well as the island community gathered to meditate upon a dead man. As the narrative progresses, the image evokes the end of innocence and youth.

The novel presents the island community as a closed microcosm in which the relationships have very specific histories. Evoking the grander picture of wartime and postwar American society, the narrative balances the world beyond the island with the island itself, along with the ways that the outer world impacts the lives on the island.

Ishmael's character slowly unfolds and then immediately draws itself into the web of the trial. His intimacy with Hatsue, Kabuo's wife, leaves the reader with the questions of how they have come to know each other so well and how their intimacy might impact the trial.

As Art describes the mysterious wound on the side of Carl's head, the author reveals the kind of man Carl had been while alive: grave, quiet, and the kind of man who named his boat after his wife, hinting at a privately passionate marriage. By contrast, Kabuo had named his boat The Islander, which offers a blank, almost abstract image of an individual without race, history, or intimacy. "The Islander," rather, is a person defined, in essence, by the place in which he has lived, and this epithet can apply to practically every character in the novel. The names of the two boats therefore suggest two different ways of constructing a personal identity. Naming a boat for a loved one represents tying one's fate to another's through love, while naming a boat in terms of a place represents the desire to construct one's identity through the place in which one has been born or in which one has chosen to live one's life.

Judge Fielding calls for a recess, and the bailiff, Ed Soames, leads the jurors out of the courtroom. The narrative flashes back to the morning of September 16, from Ishmael's point of view. After hearing about Carl's death, Ishmael contacts the coroner, Horace Whaley, to confirm the news. Musing about how Ishmael and Carl had gone to high school together and played on the football team, graduating the same year, Ishmael's thoughts drift to Carl and his wife, a pair from common German stock. As he walks past the seasonal tourists, Ishmael's thoughts next drift toward the possibility of living elsewhere. After the war, at 23, he had lived in Seattle, gone to college, and taken an American literature course. But in the end he decided journalism would make for a better living.

Ishmael's father, Arthur, had founded a four-page weekly called the San Piedro Review. Following his work as a logger, Arthur discovered his passion for the principles of journalism, assuring that each printed item was "morally meticulous." Businessmen had even tried to convince him to run for the Washington state legislature, but he had refused. Remembering his father, Ishmael's thoughts shift toward how everything has changed with the war. He is unhappy now: over thirty, unmarried, with only one arm. In his discontent, he recalls how his mother once said that his father had "loved humankind dearly and with all his heart, but he disliked most human beings" (27). Ishmael, in her view, was very much his father's son.

On the morning of September 16, Ishmael sees Art asking the fishermen on the docks who had been out at sea with Carl. They mention that The Islander, the boat belonging to Kabuo Miyamoto, had been fishing nearby. Art privately takes Ishmael aside, asking him to refrain from publicizing the investigation; he doesn't want the suspect to be too much on his guard. Ishmael agrees.

As the narrative cuts back to the trial, Alvin Hooks questions his next witness. Horace Whaley, the coroner, who had initially been an ordinary family physician, assumed the role of coroner when nobody else was willing to do it. Horace testifies that Carl's pocket watch had stopped at 1:47 am, and he notes that the body had been salmon-pink from its night in the cold water. (In the privacy of Horace's mind, the reader learns that Carl's physical stature, a great specimen of manhood, had made people naturally mistrust him. He had no friends to speak of, but he was a good fisherman. The war had changed everything, especially the men.) Upon examining the body, Horace concluded that Carl had gone into the water breathing, given the telltale red foam in Carl's mouth. The wound on the side of Carl head seemed, to Horace, to have been made by a flat, narrow object about two inches wide, not unlike the kind of wound Horace had seen made in combat with a kendo stick. (Kendo was an activity generally taught to Japanese boys.) Art and Abel arrived as Horace had peeled the face of the dead man back to study the wound more closely. Horace and Art both agreed that there was something suspicious about the wound.

At the trial, Nels asks Horace to repeat that the death had been by drowning. The red foam in the mouth establishes this fact "beyond doubt," Horace agrees, elaborating that the foam began forming in the early stages of the victim's struggle in the water. Pressure on the lungs, along with a combination of water, mucus, and air, causes the foam to appear, usually a short while after drowning. Nels further establishes doubt regarding the cause of the wound to the side of the head: perhaps it was due to the gunnel of a boat or a net roller. Horace agrees about the possibility, but he thinks it unlikely. Still, the key point for the defense is that Carl drowned.

The narrative refocuses on Art, who watches Horace from the audience. He recalls having gone to Susan Marie and given her the bad news. He had always noticed her in church: she was 28 and attractive. Upon his arrival at her home, however, she had fallen into quite a different state, sinking onto the bottom stair to say emptily, "I knew this would happen one day" (56).

Analysis

The narrative gradually deepens our understanding of each character, usually through the recollections of other characters and personal flashback. Ishmael, for instance, offers the reader a better sense of who Carl had been, also establishing how he, Carl, and Kabuo had all gone to high school at the same time. The novel hereby indicates that it will structure time between a shared youth and maturity, the past and the present trial. Ishmael, Carl, and Kabuo will each be shown in their youth, along with the influences of each of their parents. In maturity, the extent to which each of these characters comes to reflect the qualities of their parents crucially determines the events that take place. In other words, a central shaping factor of identity and action is one's generational inheritance, what is passed from parents to children.

The novel also introduces the structural division between earth and sea with special regard to vocation. The island, according to the narrative, breathes by the salmon, but, at the same time, it relies on the strawberry farms and the cannery. Both Carl and Kabuo are fishermen, but they would prefer to be strawberry farmers, not because one vocation is better than the other, but because both men had grown up on farms. Fishing presents the solitary image of the "silent-toiling, autonomous gill-netter" as the "collective image of the good man" in the community (29). At the same time, Kabuo struggles with the work. The extent to which Kabuo shares in the "fraternity of fishermen" is brought into question as Art questions the fishermen: they refer to him as "a Jap," the derogatory term used for residents of Japanese ancestry. The narrative also highlights the fact that Carl too had been set apart from the "fraternity," although this separation seems to have been more due to his own choice. He is, additionally, of German stock, though the men exhibit no particularly derogative reaction toward this ethnicity. Their greater toleration of Carl than of Kabuo indicates the general U.S. reaction to Japanese residents during the war. While the United States was at war against both Germany and Japan (as well as Italy), only the residents with Japanese ancestry were relocated into camps.

Ishmael's characterization deepens through discussion of his father Arthur, who had founded the island newspaper. Arthur had been a good man, committed to the social good, and an idealist; he spoke powerfully to the responsibility of the island community to reject prejudice against its own residents. In rejecting involvement in politics, he signals a refusal to compromise his sense of moral direction, feeling perhaps that he can do more good for his community as a voice of conscience.

Whether Ishmael becomes like his father remains to be seen, though we know Ishmael has already taken over the paper. He disliked literature as a profession in that it was not practical as a way to make a living, but evidently he enjoyed judging the books and their characters. With an honest eye, Ishmael empathized with Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter, who he felt had been unjustly punished by her community. His judgment foreshadows Ishmael's present role in Guterson's narrative, and it reveals, to a certain degree, how novels themselves can help shape one's conscience. Ishmael's father had also been an avid reader; he had educated himself this way. Snow Falling on Cedars seems to aspire to the same endeavor, providing literature as something other than a way to make a living: it serves to educate.

The witnesses Art, Abel, and Horace Whaley, as they relate the investigation surrounding Carl's death, are sympathetic and well drawn. Their suspicions regarding the wound to Carl's head seem reasonable, even to the reader. The power of prejudice, however, is that the observer often succumbs to the idea that a negative judgment is well reasoned or "rational." Arthur, in fact, refers to prejudice in the midst of wartime hysteria as "madness."

There are twenty-four Japanese observers gathered in the back of the courtroom. There is no explicit law that states that they must sit in the back, but social pressure compels them to. This detail leads readers to an overview of the status of Japanese residents in the United States at the time. People of Japanese descent could not legally hold title to land unless they were citizens, but the catch was that residents of Japanese descent could not become citizens. In spite of this situation, the San Piedro Island community attempted to live in harmony, best expressed by the annual Strawberry Festival in early July. Each year, a Japanese maiden was crowned Strawberry Princess; the following day, the Japanese began picking raspberries. This vision of harmony occurs during the lush summer harvests, in contrast to the wintry time of the trial. The narrative further reveals that on March 29, 1942, the U.S. War Relocation Authority commanded all persons of Japanese ancestry to gather at the ferry terminal of Amity Harbor in eight days' time for relocation.

At the conclusion of Horace's testimony, the trial breaks for the morning recess. Hatsue heads to the front of the courtroom to speak with her husband, with whom she shares a son and two daughters. Kabuo, by this time, has been imprisoned for seventy-seven days. The narrative then offers a deeper view into Hatsue. As a girl, she had been carefully trained by Mrs. Shigemura in the ways of managing her beauty and grace. As a Japanese, she also learned a view of life that embraced death, and she learned that America was a place that brought the Japanese tension and unhappiness. Still, she learned that it was important to always maintain an inner stillness and harmony, in order to withstand the difficulties life would ultimately present. Hatsue, being beautiful, was also warned of white men's lust and advised to marry a good Japanese man.

Hatsue's mother Fumiko had come to America as a picture bride, and the arranger of the marriage had assured her that Hisao was a wealthy man. When Fumiko arrived in Seattle, however, she found him a pauper. He apologized profusely and, over time, she grew to forgive him. They shared five daughters, Hatsue being the eldest. When the family had moved to San Piedro Island, they each had fallen in love with the life of strawberry farming. It was, in their view, clear work.

Hatsue and Ishmael had met first when they were ten on a beach. Ishmael taught Hatsue how to swim in the sea, and at sea they shared a first kiss. But now, as she stands at the front of the courtroom with her husband, her thoughts are occupied with Kabuo and how they had married at Manzanar, the relocation camp where residents of Japanese ancestry had been sent. Country music had drowned out their embraces the night after the wedding. She had thought briefly of Ishmael then but, when Kabuo asked her if she had ever been with another man, she answered no, leaving the reader to doubt. Kabuo had gone to fight in the war eight days later, saying it was a matter of honor: "There was something extra that had to be proved, a burden this particular war placed on him..." (70).

Ishmael watches her longingly in the courtroom and thinks of how he has seen her change. They had kissed each other again in the secret hollow of an old cedar tree but, he recalls, she had felt it was wrong. For a while, she had avoided him, but slowly she returned. During their youth, they had often been kissing in that cedar tree.

As the trial resumes after the morning recess, Alvin Hooks calls his next witness. Etta Heine, Carl's mother, had never particularly liked island life or strawberry farming. She didn't like the fruit. She much preferred Seattle, where she and her husband Carl Senior had first lived and where she had made a living as a seamstress. When Carl Senior passed away in 1944, she sold the farm to Ole Jurgensen, whose holdings then spanned sixty-five acres in the middle of Center Valley. Etta testifies that she has known Kabuo and the Miyamoto family for more than twenty years. One day, Zenhichi Miyamoto, Kabuo's father, had come to see Carl Senior about buying seven acres of the hilly land, the least productive part of the farm. Etta, however, warned her husband about the transaction. Prices were low because of the Depression, but the real estate was sure to go up. Nevertheless, Carl Senior arranged for a quasi-legal "lease-to-own" contract for the length of eight years, payments to be made every six months on top of the down payment of five hundred dollars. By the end of the eight-year lease period, Kabuo would be twenty and, born in the U.S., he was an American citizen; title would go into his name. Etta testifies that the Miyamotos missed the final two payments in 1942, during the time they were relocated. Carl Senior had insisted that the entire event was wrong, but Etta had countered that it was wartime. He said to her, "We ain't right together" (94), but she hadn't cared about that for a long time. When Zenhichi arrived at the house to try to pay 120 dollars, Carl Senior had told him to keep it because he would need it, assuring him so he would not worry. In the meantime, Carl Junior had gone to visit Kabuo, who had given him a bamboo fishing rod. When Etta saw the gift, she told him to return it. In the end, the Miyamotos missed the final two payments and, because the contract had been breached, she sold the land and returned to the Miyamotos all of their equity.

From the proceeds of the sale, Etta rented a modest bedroom over Lottie's apparel shop in Amity Harbor. In July 1944, Kabuo arrived at her door, and she insisted that she had done nothing illegal. Kabuo replied that doing "wrong" was another matter. From then on, Etta states to the court, Kabuo had given her dirty looks in town. She had complained about it to her son, and from then on, in her view, her son and Kabuo were enemies.

Nels, in the cross-examination, draws attention to the fact that the Miyamotos would have paid a total of $4,500 for the property but, by 1945, the land was worth $7,000. In highlighting these facts, Nels implies that Etta coveted the profit for herself.

Ole Jurgnesen takes the stand next and recalls that the 1944 property deed Etta had given him was free and clear. He had known nothing of the arrangement with the Miyamotos until, one day, Kabuo had arrived at his door insisting that Etta had robbed him. Ole advised that Kabuo take it up with her and told him where she was living. After recently suffering a stroke, Ole decided to put all of his land on the market, and on September 7 Carl Heine arrived at his door with a down payment. They shook hands; it was a deal. Later that same day, Kabuo arrived, and Ole explained to him he had already sold the land to Carl.

Analysis

Though it is not a law that the Japanese residents sit at the back of the courtroom, they are compelled to by the social power of prejudice. In the courtroom, this example resonates with the often difficult truth that individuals, though considered equal under the law, may not be considered equal socially. In other words, society itself may prove the stronger judge, with unjust consequences. The novel illustrates this possibility by presenting an accused man of Japanese descent and Japanese observers sitting in the back of the room. This illustration suggests another structural division in the fabric of the narrative: the law (figured as the space of the courtroom during Kabuo's trial) versus, and impacted by, the social views among white residents in the island community.

Against this illustration, the narrative cuts to a vision of communal harmony set in the summertime, where the island, lush with harvest, celebrates the strawberries by coming together as one community. The Japanese residents who supply much of the labor for the farming are, in a sense, applauded when a Japanese girl is crowned Strawberry Princess. On a less obvious, individual level, meanwhile, the crowning indicates Hatsue's place from Ishmael's point of view: she is forever on a pedestal embodying "the spirit of the place."

From there, the youthful love between Hatsue and Ishmael comes to light. In the summer of their lives, in contrast to the winter trial, harmony among all of the island residents, in spite of its racial divides, had seemed possible. Nevertheless, Hatsue experiences guilt within the relation: schooled in traditional Japanese values, she feels, on a certain level, that her actions betray her family and heritage. Cultural schooling had taught her there was a difference between Japanese and Americans, and that Americans would find it difficult to understand who the Japanese really were. Seeking to preserve what was essentially Japanese about Hatsue, her teacher advised that she seek a Japanese man to love.

A key conversation that occurrs between Hatsue and Ishmael reveals the presumed cultural difference, however, as perhaps nothing more than a matter of perspective. While in Ishmael's eyes all of the waters of the seas of the earth make one sea, to Hatsue each of the seas has its own distinct virtues, its own name and color. The conversation can be read on a deeper level in that Ishmael, in the way of his father, is an idealist who views humankind in its general, abstract form: fundamentally, all human beings are at heart the same. This is precisely the attitude that leads Arthur to defend the Japanese residents in the community during the war. So for Ishmael, though Hatsue is Japanese she is nonetheless "the spirit of the place," because she is simply the girl he has grown to love on the island. Hatsue, meanwhile, projects a vision of the diversity of the world. Her vision resonates strongly with the value of unique and diverse cultures and points to the fluidity of borders--individuals, more and more, can and do travel from the countries in which they were born, in the hope of a better life, leading them to become aware of diverse sets of values. The novel provides no reason to choose between the two perspectives, each being valuable in certain respects. The key seems to lie in striking a balance between universality and particularity. For Hatsue and Ishmael, history and context assert a unique pressure to resolve this abstract conflict in real-life terms.

Hence, at a time when Hatsue's Japanese identity comes under fire, she slowly asserts it in a show of loyalty by marrying a Japanese man, not unlike the way Kabuo needed to assert his American identity by fighting in the war. With Ishmael, the danger is that Hatsue's Japanese self will become a moot point in the face of a universal love.

On a more fundamentally human level, Hatsue's character reveals how the past is unique to each of us, held privately and never completely known or understood by another (or even ourselves). Hatsue, for instance, consistently holds herself away from Ishmael; in a similar way, she holds from Kabuo the part of her life that includes Ishmael. This act of holding back the past signals a fundamental separateness of human beings. Even in the most intimate of love relationships, solitude persists, and each person's uniqueness can become difficult to express. In a sense we are all alike in our solitude, though we each experience it in our own way. This experience becomes especially acute for men in the novel with respect to their experiences at war.

The novel therefore follows a structure along the lines of separate personal histories and, as these histories come to light, the narrative explores the shared youth of Hatsue and Ishmael and the romance between Hatsue and Kabuo. In the end, the common cultural experience that Hatsue and Kabuo share finds a fruition in marriage. Still, it is important to add that they come together because they share the same particular dream, that of one day owning a strawberry farm. People are not entirely different, and some people may be more alike than unalike; the marriage results from love and a common heritage, plus a shared dream of a common future.

As far as Etta Heine is concerned, her revelation regarding the land deal between her deceased husband and the Miyamotos shows how her actions have come to affect a number of lives in the community. Members of a community inevitably confront the fact that all of their fates are linked with one another's. The relocation of the Japanese residents, in contrast, expresses a motivation to insist on separateness (despite the legal status of many of the Japanese residents as American citizens). The conflict surrounding the land sale also reflects the causes of war between countries that are in conflict over territorial expansion.

Etta is not a likeable character, and the reader senses, though it is not made explicit, how the Miyamoto family reacted to the death of Carl Senior. He had actively taken a part in helping the family achieve a particular dream, but his unfortunate death led his wife to take action. Kabuo takes the moral high ground when he states that her action, though legal, is "wrong," highlighting the discrepancy that often exists between law and morality, the legal and the ethical. At its best, law is a product of human reason, but it sometimes reflects irrational prejudices. These concepts were confronted by people in the United States when an Executive Order signed by the President of the United States that forced the relocation of citizens of only Japanese ancestry was found to be "legal" in a 1944 case, Korematsu v. United States. The moral "wrongness" of the order in that it curtailed the civil liberties and rights of American citizens--despite its legality--provides a sobering lesson from American history.

Kabuo and Carl Heine, the son of Etta and Carl Senior, had been childhood friends. Their friendship was marked by Kabuo's gift of a bamboo fishing pole. At this point, our questions about Carl are: was Carl more like his mother or his father? What did he inherit from each of them, and how are these traits expressed in his actions? Does he take his mother's side with regard to the land? Or has he absorbed his father's friendship and concern for building a stronger community?

As Kabuo has lunch in his basement cell, he studies his face in the mirror, thinking of how Hatsue told him to be careful with his expression. His mind slips in the direction of the war, and he begins considering the Germans he had killed, one of them a boy. Nels had told him the same thing--to be careful of his face--for, in the courtroom, his face would be his fate (117). His father, however, had told him something different about his expression. According to Japanese tradition, the greater the composure, the greater the strength of the character revealed. But this paradox was not widely understood in America.

Kabuo had told Nels from the start that he had not killed Carl, and Nels responded that the prosecutor was aiming for conviction for murder in the first degree, as well as with the death penalty. Kabuo thought it was karmic retribution, since he had killed men during the war. He did not think, on some level, that he deserved any of his happiness.

The narrative flashes back to the period when Hatsue and Ishmael met in the cedar tree for four years during their youth. Ishmael, hopelessly in love, knew he wanted to marry her. Hatsue, on the other hand, continued to feel guilt about the relationship. When the people on the island heard news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese community understood that their circumstances would become hard. Suspicions were already running high. Arthur attempted to call the people into check by writing about prejudice and hate and how America must remain, even in the face of war, "a just society." As a result, however, Arthur began to receive hate mail, accusing him of traitorous sympathies for the Japanese.

On February 4, 1942, two FBI agents arrived at the door of Hatsue's home and confiscated all items of a distinctly Japanese coloring--harmless things such as a bamboo flute, a kimono, a sword, even sheet music and Hatsue's scrapbook. When the agents searched outside of the house, they found dynamite, which they claimed Hisao ought to have turned in. He tried to explain that he needed it to clear land, but the dynamite became an excuse to arrest him. Along with many of the other Japanese men on the island, he was taken away to a camp. Fumiko gathered all of her daughters together, telling them that these were times to be strong. Hatsue responded with anger, saying that she wished she had never been born Japanese. To worry her mother further, Hatsue then contradicted herself with a claim that she knew who she was--though, in her mother's eyes, this was far from the truth.

On the cold winter's night before the day of the relocation, Hatsue traveled to the cedar tree, discovering, to her surprise, that she could not admit that she loved Ishmael. When Ishmael asked her to marry him, she responded with nothing. As they grew close to making love, she stopped him and fled from the tree, feeling suddenly that the relationship was wrong.

Analysis

When Nels tells Kabuo that his fate will be determined by his face, he refers to the way people look into a person's face to gain a better sense of the person's character. "Character," in other words, can determine one's "fate," and the act of judging is essential. But when prejudice is involved, the judgment can be inaccurate or untrue. In Kabuo's case, the foreignness of his expression and his face reinforces the suspicion that he killed Carl, particularly once the story of the land deal comes to light. The reader, however, knows that the Japanese have been culturally taught to avoid outward displays of inner emotion--moreover, that this is how a person's true character becomes clear. White Americans, in contrast, misread this cultural expression, because they read faces with the presumption that the truth of a person's character can often be openly read in a person's face. The reader, aware of this contrast, is called upon to judge the case fairly, withholding judgment until more of the story comes to light.

At this point, Kabuo's father Zenhichi and the Miyamoto samurai heritage are worth attention. A good man and a good teacher, Zenhichi trains his son in kendo, passing along the family's samurai tradition, as well as the history of how Japanese society had erased the samurai's place in it, condemning him to a life of wandering. Many committed seppuku, the traditional method of suicide, in order to preserve their honor. The Japanese had gone so far as to harness the value of honor into a strength in fighting the war. Given this background, to what extent does Kabuo inherit these samurai values? To what extent is he willing to fight for redress of the wrong done to his family regarding the land?

The narrative emphasizes Arthur's role during the Japanese relocation. Arthur had written, through the fog of war, that the community should remember to rise above the irrationality of prejudice that had come to dominate their island. Insisting that America, a "just society," could not compromise its values on any account, the newspaper had filled provided a necessary voice of moral leadership (something the government had failed to do). In Arthur's view, "moral meticulousness" was more necessary now than ever.

The reader is also encouraged to wonder about Ishmael's role in the trial, in light of his encounters with Hatsue. As the war swarmed around them, Hatsue and Ishmael retreated into the cedar tree, away from the rest of the community. Their safe retreat comes to represent their shared innocence and youth. Hatsue, however, at the moment when their innocence and their youth might come of age into adulthood, concludes that her priorities must rest elsewhere. By clinging to the preciousness of the space, her personal American identity and her Japanese inherited identity collide. The circumstances require her to make a choice. As she faces her uncertainty, she watches the FBI agents confiscate the objects that represent her inheritance, in particular something deeply personal: her scrapbook. The scrapbook symbolizes how these residents of Japanese ancestry suffered highly personal losses during the relocation.

Hatsue realizes: "If identity was geography instead of blood--if living in a place was what mattered--then Ishmael was a part of her, inside of her, as much as anything Japanese. It was, she knew, the simplest kind of love, the purest form, untainted by Mind, which twisted everything" (155). Personal love and personal experience did not have to crowd out her cultural heritage, but the new wartime circumstances threatened the inherited part of Hatsue that, despite Ishmael's good intentions and blind idealism, could never become a part of his own future.

The Japanese residents of San Piedro, after gathering at the ferry, travel by train for California and the relocation camp Manzanar. Suffering atrocious, unhygienic conditions and poor food for four days, they arrive. After another four days, a young married couple commit suicide.

Upon settling into the camp, Hatsue's younger sister Sumiko discovers a love letter from Ishmael and reads it over several times before handing it dutifully over to her mother, who wonders what Hatsue can possibly know about love. Fumiko, herself, had been a romantic sort of girl, but upon her arrival in America she had learned that love was something practical. She tells Hatsue that she must never write to the boy again. After recovering from her shock, Hatsue confides that she has already decided that the relationship has been wrong. Her mother now commands her to write a letter.

Kabuo arrives shortly thereafter and, after offering to make furniture for Fumiko's family, it becomes clear that he admires Hatsue. Hatsue, still adapting emotionally to the end of her relationship with Ishmael, gradually warms to Kabuo. She realizes that they share a similar dream of owning a strawberry farm. After he kisses her for the first time, she is surprised by how different it feels from kissing Ishmael. Kabuo's kiss is far less gentle.

Meanwhile, Ishmael trains as a marine rifleman for combat in the Pacific theater. Prior to a battle, someone tells him it is his last chance to write a letter. He lifts his pen and begins to write to Hatsue, telling her that he hates her, but he throws the letter into the sea. As he lands on the beach, shells fall over his head, followed by gunfire, and marines die all around him. Ishmael is struck, especially, by the memory of Eric Bledsoe, a young man hit in the knee and calling for help. A part of him desires to save the man, but another part numbly refuses. In the end, he sees Eric's leg slowly come off into the sea. Later, a bullet strikes Ishmael in the arm, splintering the bone. After the amputation, he wakes only to see his arm disturbingly cast on the floor, like trash.

Now, back at the trial, Art takes the witness stand a second time to testify about the length of rope discovered on Carl's boat that had failed to match the rest. After procuring a search warrant from Judge Fielding, Art found that Kabuo's mooring lines matched the one found on Carl's boat. After Kabuo insisted he had not killed Carl, Art further discovered that one of the mooring lines on Kabuo's boat had been stained by blood. Art looked into Kabuo's eyes and found he could not read the truth; it seemed that something had been concealed. Worried that Kabuo might flee, he made the arrest.

Analysis

Fumiko sets an example for her daughter Hatsue and asserts a strong consciousness of her roots and her heritage. Fumiko, when she arrived in America in pursuit of a dream and an adventure, faced a harsh reality not uncommon to the immigrant experience. But, in the end, she and her husband Hisao arrived at a more realistic pursuit of their dream: having a family, hard and clear work, and living on an island that reminded them of their homeland. Hatsue and Kabuo develop a similar version of the dream: to own their own strawberry farm on the island.

Thus while Hatsue and Ishmael shared a youthful, idyllic love characterized by "gentler" kisses, Hatsue and Kabuo discover that their bond, while passionate, is also practical: they share a common heritage and, perhaps more importantly, a common vision of the future. Hatsue has inherited her mother's more mature idea of love which, while vividly romantic in her youth, had become something practical with Hisao. This kind of love draws its strength from both faith and forgiveness. Hatsue's conclusion that Kabuo's kiss is far less gentle than Ishmael's is an indication of this more mature love, on the one hand, while on the other hand it foreshadows the less gentle life she will lead with Kabuo.

Fumiko's rejection of her daughter's relationship with Ishmael asserts the cultural difference between the residents of Japanese ancestry in America and the white residents. Especially in view of the circumstances of the war and the internment of Japanese Americans, cultural difference becomes a defense for cultural rejection. Since white America, on a powerfully public level, was rejecting the faith and loyalty of the Japanese Americans, Fumiko, in her private realm, pushes her daughter to reject Ishmael. But Hatsue has arrived at the conclusion herself, via a different reasoning: she seeks to assert her cultural identity as something to be preserved and not something to overcome.

The loss of Ishmael's arm signifies his loss of Hatsue; she was integral to his life and now is gone from it. After the amputation, Ishmael experiences the presence of a "ghost arm" because his nerve endings remain intact. This feeling parallels his feelings for Hatsue. Though she is no longer the love in his life, he can still feel her there. The "ghost arm" indicates an attachment to the past via memory.

Note also Ishmael's emotional response to Eric Bledsoe, the boy he sees hit in the knee. One part of Ishmael desires to save him; the other part knows it is a bad idea and that he would probably die in the process. On one level, seeing Eric's leg come off into the sea foreshadows the loss of Ishmael's arm, but on a different level his "watching" parallels Ishmael's role during Kabuo's trial. Will Ishmael again do nothing, or will he act, in spite of himself, to save someone?

Finally, it is important to note that Judge Fielding strikes the reader as a good judge of character. When he states that Etta Heine is not trustworthy, readers can fully agree. The general issue turns on the extent to which a "good judge" can influence a "good outcome" for a judicial proceeding, guided both by rules and by the demands of expediency.

Art also judges when he looks into Kabuo's eyes after searching the boat for evidence. He determines that the man's eyes conceal the truth and that Kabuo is not a man to be trusted. Whether or not this judgment was correct remains to be revealed.

On the morning of December 7, Alvin Hooks calls his next witness, Dr. Sterling Whitman. Dr. Whitman is a hematologist (a blood specialist), and he has weathered the morning ferry through the snowstorm in order to testify that the blood on the mooring line found on Kabuo's boat was type B positive, which matches Carl's blood type. Kabuo's blood type, by contrast, is O negative. In the cross-examination, Nels draws attention to the blood having been found on the wooden handle end of the rope and not on the hook. Additionally, no bone or hair fragments accompanied the blood, indicating that the blood must have come from the wound on Carl's hand.

Next, three fishermen testify for the prosecution that Carl and Kabuo had been fishing in the same waters. Nels asks, in the cross-examination, if it is common for a fisherman to board another man's boat. The response is no, but that arguments have definitely occurred at sea. The fishermen call it "corking off" when one man reaches the fish first and sets his net in such a way that the flow of the fish never reaches the other man further downstream. Men have wasted a lot of time trying to monopolize the stream.

Alvin Hooks then calls Army First Sergeant Victor Maples, a man who has trained combat troops in Illinois. He remembers Kabuo distinctly, because he had demonstrated his kendo expertise and even given Maples an opportunity to train under him. He testifies that Kabuo definitely has the technical skill to kill a man with a fishing gaff.

Hooks calls Susan Marie Heine, Carl's wife, as the final witness. She strikes the audience as sensual and tragic as she begins her testimony. On September 9, Kabuo had come to her door, asking to speak to Carl, and the two of them had gone outdoors to discuss the strawberry farm Carl had agreed to purchase from Ole. As she tells her story, the narrative flashes back to when Susan Marie and Carl had met--their kisses against a cedar tree--and then, after they had married, when he had purchased the boat. He had named it for her, and they had made love there. The marriage was passionate. Returning to her testimony, Susan Marie states that she was never sure whether Carl and Kabuo were enemies or friends. When Carl had returned from his talk, he had told his wife that Kabuo had offered to purchase the same seven acres of land. He still had not decided what to do, and he confessed to her that it felt strange: Kabuo was Japanese, and besides, there were his dirty looks toward Etta. On the cross-examination, Nels highlights the fact that Susan Marie had not been present during the conversation; she could only testify regarding what she had heard her husband tell her, which was technically hearsay. (Nevertheless, because of the Dead Man's Statute, hearsay is admissible when the evidence might illuminate the reasons behind a man's death, if the conversation had been held with the dead man himself. Hence, Susan Marie's testimony is admissible.) Nels then seeks affirmation that Kabuo had never given either Carl or Susan Marie dirty looks. Only Etta reported such a thing.

Just as Nels concludes his cross-examination, the lights in the courthouse go out, and Alvin Hooks announces that the state rests. The judge announces that the trial will resume the next day.

As Ishmael heads to his mother's home, he sees Hisao's station wagon stuck in the snow. Hatsue is with him. Ishmael stops and offers his help, and when they fail to free the car, Ishmael drives them home. While driving, he and Hisao agree that, in spite of the trouble, the snow is breathtaking. Ishmael watches Hatsue from his rearview mirror as she begins to speak bitterly about the trial and about how unfair it all is--how Kabuo would never kill anyone--and that the accusation was the same as the relocation: driven by prejudice. Ishmael counters her by expressing his faith in the judicial system, but she rejects it; to her the whole trial is wrong. He says that she cannot expect fairness all the time, but she insists that, in a place like this, a place where both she and Kabuo have grown up their whole lives, a place where the community members know who they are, she feels she has a right to expect something more. Kabuo, in other words, deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Analysis

As the evidence mounts against Kabuo, three fishermen testify against him and thus illustrate Kabuo's separateness from the "fraternity of fishermen." The picture they paint of life and work at sea takes on a competitive sport-like quality. "Corking off" is an activity that highlights the active greed that pushes men to hoard the fish for themselves. The competition parallels, in another venue, the conflict between Carl and Kabuo for the strawberry land. Was Carl willing to share the land at all, or was he intent on keeping all of the land for himself?

The testimony by Sergeant Maples is deeply ironic. Kabuo, though having proved his loyalty to his American citizenship by fighting in the war, now faces the betrayal of a man he had personally trained in kendo arts. When the Sergent testifies that Kabuo's skills make him capable of killing a man, this emphasis echoes the general betrayal that Japanese Americans faced during and after their terms of military service. In spite of Japanese Americans' proof of loyalty, white Americans still leapt to awful, false conclusions regarding their characters.

Through Susan Marie, we learn more of the kind of man Carl had been while alive. He had been passionate and attentive, but closed in a way that is similar to what Hatsue experiences in her relationship with Kabuo. Each man returned from the war with deep emotional wounds difficult to express or to heal. The similarity between the women's experiences in marriage during the period after the war highlights how personal experience ensures an inevitable, fundamental separateness, even in the most intimate of relationships.

Susan Marie's testimony makes clear that she was never sure whether her husband and Kabuo were friends or enemies. Etta testified that they were enemies, but the true status of their relationship remains unclear. The ambiguity in the relationship reflects the ambiguity in the relationship between white Americans and the Japanese residents more generally. In addition, the narrative clearly organizes Kabuo and Carl's lives as parallels: they are both American citizens, both have heritages made suspect during the war, and both are solitary by nature. They had lived as neighbors when they were young and had been childhood friends. Now, they are both grown, married, with children, with the same desire to own a strawberry farm. In other words, they are mirror images of one another or, at the very least, like brothers. The key difference, however, lies in their race.

As Susan Marie concludes her testimony, Ishmael considers the entire event of the trial in contrast to the snowstorm. The trial was "a human affair, [standing] squarely in the arena of human responsibility, ... no mere accident of wind and sea but instead a thing humans could make sense of. Its progress, its impact, its outcome, its meaning--these were in the hands of the people" (237). In other words, the legal system is within the control of human faculties, able to be guided by reason and fairness. Hatsue, however, confronts this possibility by claiming that the relocation and the trial were both unfair in the same way. In both cases, the law had been given force on unfair and unreasonable grounds. Residents of Japanese descent had suffered. Especially in the relocation, family had been separated; many had lost everything. Hatsue agrees that there is bound to be unfairness in the world; fortune is never fair. At the same time, she insists that a community has a particular responsibility to work for greater fairness. In living together, the community ought to have a stricter sense of justice, as well as a stricter intimacy with each of its citizens, than the island now has. Hatsue knows her husband is not a cold-blooded murderer. She is able to judge him fairly, based on her intimacy, in the same way that she had judged Ishmael to be good at heart. This conversation between Hatsue and Ishmael proves to be the turning point in the novel. From here the narrative begins to reveal more of the goodness Hatsue has so much faith in. She essentially asks, when she speaks bitterly to Ishmael, why cannot the community see Kabuo's goodness? In other words, can they see the goodness of human beings generally, without the blinders of prejudice?

Ishmael decides to investigate the events of the trial himself. Visiting the lighthouse, he asks chief petty officer Evan Powell if he can have the opportunity to examine the lighthouse records. Powell accepts his request and calls for the radioman Levant to offer him assistance. As Ishmael begins his search, his thoughts slide back to Hatsue and how he had reacted angrily to seeing her for the first time after the war. She had inquired about his arm, and he had said it was all because of "the Japs." Later, he had broken down and asked her for comfort. Refusing, she made it clear to him she was now another man's wife. As he dwells upon the past, Ishmael suddenly discovers the records of the night in question. A large freighter ship, the West Corona, had come through Ship Channel Bank. Ishmael knew a freighter of that size would create a wake large enough to upset a fishing boat. A man named Milholland had signed the record. Levant tells Ishmael that Milholland had left the San Piedro post on September 17, the day Carl's body was found, and the day Levant himself had arrived to take over the post.

Ishmael holds onto the records and visits his mother. Mrs. Helen Chambers tells Ishmael that Kabuo's trial illustrates the prejudice that still exists against the Japanese. Ishmael experiences a desire to tell his mother now about Hatsue, but finds he is unable to. Mrs. Chambers, well aware of her son's unhappiness (if not the exact reason), tells him the answer is for him to be married and have children. That night, surrounded by his father's books, Ishmael reads the letter Hatsue had sent to him long ago from Manzanar. It was the one that had stated their love was over.

On the morning of the third day of the trial, the defense calls its first witness, Hatsue. The narrative flashes back, using Hatsue's point of view, to when Kabuo's father Zenhichi had the foresight to bury the family swords and scrolls and the photograph of Kabuo's great-grandfather, the samurai, in the strawberry fields after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Zenhichi had since passed away of stomach cancer, and the family had lost everything. When Kabuo returned from the war, Hatsue sensed the depth of his wounds, further exacerbated by the injustice that had been done to his family. When the couple returned to San Piedro Island, they lived in a dilapidated house and Kabuo purchased a boat to make money fishing. He did not prove to be a very good fisherman, but the dream of eventually owning his own strawberry farm kept him hard at work. Hatsue, on the other hand, grew increasingly practical. On the witness stand, she describes how her husband came home from talking with Carl feeling elated. On the morning of September 16, he came home from fishing with the news that he had helped Carl with a dead battery at sea and that, during the night, they had reached an agreement as to the seven acres. Content, Kabuo went to sleep, and Hatsue later heard from the clerk at Petersen's general store that Carl's body had been found drowned.

In the cross-examination, Alvin Hooks asks Hatsue why she did not phone anyone immediately with the good news. Also, he asks why she and Kabuo waited so long to come forward with the truth. She answers that it was difficult: they knew that things looked bad. They believed silence would be better.

Nels calls Josiah Gillanders as his next witness. Josiah is the president of the San Piedro Gill-Netters Association, and he explains to the court the honor code in effect at sea. Generally, no one boards another boat except in an emergency. Then, everyone helps. It is impossible to force one's way onto another boat against another's will. Kabuo, Josiah conjectures, probably boarded the boat to help Carl with a spare engine. Ship Channel Bank was a dangerous place to be "dead in the water." He could not imagine anyone in their right mind planning a murder at sea, in that fog, in that place. It was too risky. In the cross-examination, however, Hooks offers an alternative: perhaps Kabuo had pretended his own engines were having trouble. Perhaps he had lured Carl's boat to his side before killing him. Josiah had to admit the possibility.

Analysis

When Ishmael discovers the evidence at the lighthouse, the reader becomes convinced of Kabuo's innocence. The question turns then to Ishmael: what will he do with the truth? Will he bring it to light? If so, by what motivation? The answers remain to be seen. All the reader knows is that Ishmael does not act immediately on the truth. The reader may then recall the boy he had watched on the beach during the war: Ishmael had been conflicted about how to act. Though his inaction had been understandable then, it is not so much now. His decision will ultimately point the way in which he will come to terms with his past. Will he bury it and make it pure, as the snow covers the cedars? Will he inherit his father's place in the town? The questions are left open. As the narrative makes the issue of Kabuo's innocence certain, it shifts to the mystery of how Ishmael will act.

Ishmael's mother accentuates Ishmael's grief for Hatsue. When she tells him that the way of happiness is to marry and to have children, all he can think about is Hatsue. She is the only woman he has ever imagined being married to and having children with. Robbed of this possibility, his future seems empty, and he has a hard time envisioning the possibility of an alternative.

As the novel shifts back to the trial, with Hatsue on the witness stand, the narrative deepens our view of both Hatsue and Kabuo. After their marriage and after Kabuo's return from the war, Kabuo had become increasingly obsessed with the idea of reclaiming the family property, while Hatsue inherited more of her mother's practical outlook on the hardships dealt by life. The dream of the strawberry farm remains just a dream. At the same time, it represents something irretrievably precious about the innocence of their childhoods.

As Hatsue explains to the court, Kabuo had come home from his talk with Carl feeling hopeful. The effect of this moment in the testimony on the narrative as a whole is not unlike that of an eyelid beginning to wink open in the dark. After the dark and evil possibilities the prosecution has put forth, is it possible to believe that Kabuo had come home feeling "hopeful"? Is it possible to think that Kabuo had not been so overwhelmed by a need of revenge that he would go to the length of murdering Carl? To what extent can the community offer Kabuo the benefit of the doubt? Now that Hatsue has presented an alternative to the prosecution's story, which story is the jury likely to believe?

Finally, Josiah's testimony presents a counter-vision of the community that exists at sea. In opposition to the competitive image of "corking off" offered by the fishermen during the prosecution's case, Josiah shows how, in an emergency, all fishermen, even enemies, will come to a person's aid, in the understanding that such a good deed will be done to them in return. Each man while fishing may be his own island, but in an emergency the boats link; fishermen board one another's boats. The picture of Kabuo helping Carl with a dead battery makes perfect sense to Josiah. Not only is it reasonable, but it also shows the possibility that the two may have overcome an old wound for the sake of providing help. Kabuo, in this account, is a good man. He would not be the kind of man who seeks to kill in cold blood, but rather is the kind who seeks to build a bridge with his past--recovering an old friend and an old way of life. The prosecution, in contrast, has presented a darker, bleaker, less forgiving scenario.

As the actual events of the night in question promise to unfold at the trial, Katsuo spends a cold night in his cell and remembers how he had told Art, and later Nels, that he had not been anywhere near Carl on the night of his death. Nels, however, had confronted him with the police report and the evidence of blood on the mooring line. Kabuo confessed that he did not think anyone would believe him anyway. He was Japanese. Nels said he should have some faith in the system: the law applies equally to all men. He could, at the very least, count on a fair trial. Kabuo replied, "The truth isn't easy" (294).

On the witness stand, Kabuo now tells the court that they were fishing in a blind fog: "ghost time." He had heard the sound of a fog-horn nearby, and Carl's voice followed it, calling out that he was "dead in the water," or that his batteries had gone dead. Kabuo drew near and said he would share. They tied their boats together, and Kabuo observed that Carl had hung his lantern high on the mast. Kabuo had D-6 engines, but Carl's ran on D-8s. Carl managed to make the extra D-6 fit with a fishing gaff, but he had cut his hand in the process. Afterwards, Carl himself slowly raised the matter of the seven acres. Suddenly, he apologized for everything, for his mother, for how the whole business had come about. They looked at each other, and Carl commented that Kabuo was Japanese. Kabuo spit back that he hated Germans, some of whom he had killed during the war. Quickly, however, their mutual war-driven anger fizzled. Carl strangely revealed to him that his mother had asked him, long ago, just prior to the relocation, to return Kabuo's bamboo fishing rod. He had disobeyed and kept the rod for himself. Kabuo said it didn't matter; it was a gift, and he had meant for Carl to keep it. After a pause, Carl told him he would take $1,200 for each of the seven acres; this was the same price he was paying Ole. They shook hands and agreed to sign papers the next day.

In the cross-examination, Alvin Hooks asks the same question he posed to Hatsue: why had Kabuo not come forward with the truth sooner? Why had he lied for so long? He also asks what had possessed Kabuo to put a new battery into his boat. Kabuo replies that he had a spare in his shed. Hooks reacts by pointing to his impassive expression--the poker face--and says, slyly, that it is not a face that can be trusted. The judge angrily admonishes him for his prejudiced comment.

During the closing arguments, Alvin Hooks presents his version of the case and Nels offers another view. Eloquently, Nels states he that he has grown old and that, in facing death, he wants to share a few words: "What I see is again and again the same sad human frailty. We hate one another; we are victims of irrational fears. And there is nothing in the stream of human history to suggest we are going to change this" (315). The judge, worried that he might not have done his job as well as he ought to have done, carefully gives the jury its instructions, with particular regard for the law. The jury must determine Kabuo's guilt or innocence on the charge of murder in the first degree. This is a charge, he states, which requires premeditation or planned intent. They must agree, should they find Kabuo guilty, using a standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." He reiterates to the jury that they each were selected in the belief that they would deliberate carefully and would fairly consider the evidence in light of all competing views. By three in the afternoon, the jury files out to deliberate.

While the jury is deliberating, Ishmael considers what Nels said during the closing arguments. Nels asked the jurors to put the war behind them, to set aside prejudice. It had been ten years, after all. But Ishmael cannot imagine ever letting it go. He looks up and sees Hatsue. Nels walks to his side and says how much he has always admired his father Arthur, as well as his mother Helen. Hatsue implores Ishmael to do something with the paper, to make it speak, to defend them in the way that his father would have done.

The day comes to an end without a verdict. The narrative reveals that Alexander Van Ness, a boat builder who conscientiously takes the judge's instructions to heart, cannot rid himself of his doubt. The rest of the jurors, exasperated, are ready to convict.

Ishmael visits his mother again and finds her reading and soon ready to turn in to bed. Ishmael mulls over Miholland's notes from the lighthouse and, as he glances over his father's bookshelves, he remembers how his father had come to believe that the world had its limits, its gray areas. Mr. Fukida, he suddenly remembers, an old Japanese farmer, exchanged good wishes with his father when Ishmael was still a boy. Mr. Fukida smiled and said that they all knew his son was just like him, good at heart. Ishmael, remembering this, becomes sorrowful. He thinks about having done nothing great in the world and considers, next, what he ought to do.

That night, he goes to Hatsue. Quickly, he explains to her the lighthouse notes written in shorthand. She seems to understand why he has waited this long. He asks her if, as she grows older, she might not save a part of her memory for him. She says yes, of course she will. But she presses him to let her go. She echoes what his mother advised: go and marry, have children, live.

Early the next morning, Hatsue arrives at Ishmael's mother's home to tell him that she remembers something from Kabuo's testimony. He mentioned a lantern Carl had hung high on the mast as part of his emergency measures. Could they find it? Together, they go to see the boat and Art and Abel. Abel climbs the mast to check and, though he does not find the lantern, he discovers signs of blood and hairs. Art says he will have Horace check the hairs immediately. By ten in the morning, Judge Fielding dismisses the jurors from their duties, directing the verdict. In light of the new evidence, Kabuo is free to go.

As the narrative draws to a close, Ishmael sits to the write the truthful account of what happened to Carl on the night of the fog. He imagines how Carl heard the horn of the freighter and, preparing for the wake, climbed quickly to take the lantern down, with the fastidiousness he had inherited from his mother. The action had been ill-timed, and the wall of water slammed into his boat. The top of the mast struck his head as he sank into the water and tangled in his own net.

The narrative concludes with Ishmael reaching the realization that the human heart is never fully knowable; it is a mystery. Yet, separately, it somehow has a will; in a sense it suffers no accidents. The novel concludes with the thought that "accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart" (345).

Analysis

When Kabuo takes the stand to tell the truth of the story, he offers an account of resolution to the conflict Etta had incited by selling the seven acres in question. He explains that Carl's engine had died and that Carl had been "dead in the water," an expression that echoes ominously against the knowledge of Carl's subsequent drowning. After Kabuo had offered him one of his engines, a D-6, Carl had forced the engine to fit, in an action which symbolizes something of Carl's own psychology: he had forced Kabuo to fit into his life in such a way that the two of them could function in harmony. In his decision to sell Kabuo the same disputed seven acres of land, he once again allows for the possibility of their futures being linked, as they resume their lives as neighbors.

The gift of the bamboo fishing pole observed early on in the narrative returns now with new significance. Carl reveals that he did not follow his mother's order to return the gift; instead, he kept it and made good use of it. The action indicates that Carl is capable of defying his mother, though it is somewhat unclear whether Carl kept the gift out of greed or selfishness or because he valued it as a gift from Kabuo. For Kabuo, however, there is no difference. It was a gift, and he had meant for Carl to keep it. After coming clean with his revelation, Carl offers to sell Kabuo the seven acres. For Carl, the decision proves to be the action of his father's son--though, when he names a high price for each acre, the reader is thrown briefly into doubt. Nevertheless, this is the same price for which he is buying the land from Ole; in other words, it is a fair price. In this way, he proves to be less of the greedy type his mother exhibits and more of his father's type.

Carl and Kabuo have experienced the war similarly. While they briefly conflict in a heated way, the moment speaks to a commonality in their experience during the war. Carl says he is no longer the same man, and Kabuo says that the blood of men never washes from his heart. They understand each other perfectly, beneath their temporary anger. This common understanding is something they have not reached and perhaps cannot reach with their spouses, and it reinforces the idea of a persisting brotherhood between the two.

As the defense concludes its case and the prosecutor draws attention to Kabuo's face, we again consider the theme of what can be read in a face. Art had felt that he could not read the truth in Kabuo's face, although readers knew that Kabuo had been taught that by concealing one's emotions, the strength of one's true character comes to light. Thus, this moment at the end of the trial highlights once again the continuing cultural misunderstanding between the Japanese and the white Americans, who are unfamiliar with many aspects of Japanese heritage. The prosecutor reinforces such a misunderstanding so as to color the jury's preconceptions and stir their prejudices.

After the closing statements, the reader, now well aware of the truth, waits to observe how the various characters will act. The jury, on the one hand, is instructed carefully to follow the standards of the law, but will they be able to decide guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" in a fair manner? That the majority of the jury, save one, is ready to convict speaks pessimistically of the justice system in that context. At the same time, that there is one man who asserts a real and reasonable doubt gives us reason to hope, and the justice system ultimately does save Kabuo.

In the end, though, it is Ishmael who makes the decision that determines Kabuo's fate. Moreover, by showing the records from the lighthouse to Hatsue, he comes to terms with his love for her. She recognizes what he probably felt, and she is glad that he made the decision to come forward with the truth--although, in her view, because she has always known him to have a good heart, his choice was inevitable.

Hence, Ishmael proves to be his father's son and proves to be "morally meticulous" in his actions. He proves the Japanese farmer Mr. Fukida correct in his conclusion, as well as Hatsue's and his mother's. He accepts his inheritance.

The next morning, with the assistance of Art and Abel, when new evidence comes to light and the nature of Carl's accident at sea becomes increasingly clear, this new clarity leads the way to the truth. Art, Abel and Horace Whaley do not seek to condemn an innocent man. From the beginning, they followed what they believed were reasonable conclusions, given the evidence. Now, from the moment new evidence points the story another way, they are content to change their mind.

Thus Kabuo is freed. When Ishmael sits to the write the truth of Carl's death, he commits himself to the responsibility of father's role, as well as to the principles of journalism. He writes the truth, to the best of his knowledge. The death was an accident; fortune intervened. That so many lives have been affected by the death shows how closely linked the entire community really is.

Note also that Carl's motion to take the lantern down from the mast is reminiscent of his mother's fastidiousness, a detail that stamps a judgment on Etta more generally. Just as her own actions had affected the lives and fates of many, a characteristic she passed on to her son indirectly results in her son's death.

The novel concludes with two summations. First, human hearts are not knowable. An individual, unlike all others, must have a separate and unique experience. Thus, another's motivations and pains can never be fully known or understood or communicated. Second, "accident" rules the universe. In contrast to the human heart, which is driven for better or worse by individual will, decision, and action, a person also is buffeted by the winds of fortune and accident. Environmental and contextual pressures interact with each person's life; each person is not fully separate but lives in a community.

Faith in goodness may lie best with the human heart, despite a person's own self-divisions. The "chambers" of the human heart echo directly with Ishmael's surname and the judge's "chambers," along with the chamber within the cedar tree. In each of these places, through the course of the novel, despite ups and downs, love and good conscience have ultimately governed.

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