Snow Falling on Cedars: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Back at the trial, the Japanese islanders sit in the back of the courtroom. They aren’t legally restricted to the seats in the back, but “San Piedro require[s] it of them without calling it a law.” The ancestors of these Japanese residents had arrived on San Piedro at the end of the 19th century, many of them finding employment at the mill. The census-taker didn’t record their real names, but had used racialized, derogatory nicknames instead.

Over the next century, hundreds of additional Japanese immigrants arrived on San Piedro. After the island’s trees had been cleared and the mill dismantled, they had taken jobs clearing strawberries, another of San Piedro’s major industries. From here, some Japanese immigrants leased bundles of land, starting their own farming businesses. Most, though, worked as sharecroppers on land owned by their white neighbors. At the time, the law barred non-citizens from owning land. The law also barred Japanese immigrants from becoming citizens in the first place.

The work year of the Japanese strawberry farmers included the annual Strawberry Festival held at harvest time. A highlight of this festival was the crowning of the Strawberry Princess, who was “always a Japanese maiden dressed in satin,” representing something of an olive branch extended between the Japanese and Caucasian populations.

San Piedro’s Japanese population continued to grow: By Pearl Harbor day, there were nearly 1,000 people of Japanese descent living on the island. After Pearl Harbor day, these families would be forced by the U.S. War Relocation Authority to move to internment camps across the West. The white islanders supported the relocation, since everything was different after the war broke out.

Back in the courtroom, the trial’s morning recess is underway. Hatsue Miyamoto talks to her husband, Kabuo. Hatsue has visited her husband each afternoon since his arrest. Hatsue is 31 years old and elegant. She picks strawberries during the summer. During Hatsue’s childhood, a woman named Mrs. Shigemura had taught Hatsue the cultural traditions a young Japanese girl should know, such as how “to dance odori and to serve tea impeccably,” as well as the arts of flower arrangement and calligraphy. Mrs. Shigemura had praised Hatsue for her beauty.

Mrs. Shigemura’s lessons taught Hatsue to react to hardship with studied composure. These teachings would come in handy, as hardships had followed Hatsue all her life. In her lessons, Mrs. Shigemura also emphasized the differences between Japanese and American culture, urging Hatsue “to seek union with the Greater Life,” as opposed to fearing death, as was the American way. Mrs. Shigemura taught Hatsue to be calm and composed, but Hatsue doubted her ability to be truly calm. As a child, Hatsue would linger in nature, especially among trees, and “contemplate her attraction to the world of illusions.” She found herself torn between a longing for the calmness Mrs. Shigemura encouraged and her desire for material, American pleasures like clothes and makeup. Hatsue knew that her calm, outer composure was a lie. On the inside, she remained torn between that superficial appearance and her desire for “worldly happiness.”

Hatsue’s parents arranged for her to have these lessons with Mrs. Shigemura so that Hatsue would never forget her Japenese identity. Hatsue’s parents had incurred numerous hardships to get to the United States, and so it was important for their daughter to know where she came from. Hatsue’s mother, Fujiko, had been sent to Seattle to marry Hisao, Hatsue’s father, who she falsely believed was wealthy. After a queasy voyage across the ocean, Fujiko arrived in the United States only to discover that Hisao was of modest means. The couple was very poor, and Fujiko worked long, hard hours “for the hakujin.”

After Hatsue was born, Hisao and Fujiko moved from a shoddy Beacon Hill boardinghouse to a Jackson Street boardinghouse. The Jackson Street boardinghouse was not much of an improvement, and it smelled like rotting fish and vegetables. Still, Fujiko worked there for years, cleaning. One day, Hisao heard about jobs at the National Cannery Company. The family moved to San Piedro, where they worked in the strawberry fields.

Life was hard for the Imadas on San Piedro, too. When she was seven, Hatsue and her sisters worked outside with Fujiko. Hisao sold fish. The family saved their money and eventually were able to lease a small plot of rough land. They bought a plow and cleared the land. Then they built a house on the land, and, soon after, planted their first crops.

Hatsue grew up outside, by the ocean and in the strawberry fields. At age 10, Hatsue made friends with Ishmael Chambers, “a neighborhood boy.” The two children would explore what lurked underwater with Ishmael’s special “glass-bottomed box.” On one of these days spent on the water, Ishmael kissed her; it was her first kiss and his.

Back in the courtroom, Hatsue talks to her husband. She remarks on the snow. Kabuo notes that it reminds him of Manzanar, as snow usually does. The couple had been married in Manzanar.

In a memory, Hatsue recalls this first night together. As the snow fell outside on their wedding night, the couple made love. Kabuo smelled like earth to Hatsue, and it was then that realized she wanted a life of working the fields with the man she loved. Hatsue thought of Ishmael, but she cast him quickly out of her mind. Kabuo asked Hatsue if she’d made love before, and she lied that she hadn’t. “It feels so right,” Hatsue whispered to her new husband.

Back in the courtroom, Hatsue observes that Kabuo has grown distant since he returned from fighting in the war, which he’d enlisted for because “there was something extra that had to be proved, a burden this particular war placed on him” by virtue of his Japanese ethnicity. Hatsue anguishes over her husband’s distance, but tries to accept that it was the war that caused it. She resigns to endure his distance, his current imprisonment, and his trial.