Murder on the Sound in "Snow Falling on Cedars"

In today's America, the issue of race and ethnocentrism has always been a topic that has stirred feelings of fairness, justice, and virtue. Since the dawn of time, humans have always struggled with their inherent fear of things or peoples who are different then themselves. Whether it is fear of African-American slave revolts or Arab-American terrorist attacks, the United States has had its share of xenophobic moments, but none loom larger then the internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans on the West Coast during World War II. It is this event that is the backbone of the award-winning 1999 movie Snow Falling of Cedars. Based on the award-winning novel of the same name by American author David Guterson (who wrote the book off and on for a period of 10 years while he was working as public school English teacher and based the novel in his native Puget Sound area of Washington state), the movie was directed by Australian director Scott Hicks (Shine, Hearts in Atlantis, and No Reservations) and intertwines the history of the Japanese internment with a murder mystery and a courtroom drama.

The movie stares Ethan Hawke (Dead Poets Society. Alive, and Training Day) as well as veteran actors James Rebhorn (Scent of a Woman, Independence Day, and Meet the Parents), Max von Sydow (The Exorcist and Never Say Never Again) and Sam Shepard (The Right Stuff).

The History

A photo of the offical orders ordering
all Japanese-Americans to prepare for
removal, cir. 1941

In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, fear grew that the surprise attack on the American Pacific fleet could not have been carried out by military forces alone. Rumors circulated of divided loyalties among naturalized Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans, who were now turning traitor and spying against their adoptive country. While prejudice against Asian-Americans was nothing new on the West Coast and dated back all the way to the mid-1800's, the US' entry into World War II intensified these long-standing feelings. In February of 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt bowed to popular pressure and signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed local military forces to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones," from which "any or all persons may be excluded." While the language of the Order does not specifically target Japanese-Americans, this power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona. Those Japanese-American families that fell inside these "zones" were rounded up and transported to secluded areas known as "internment camps" where military officials planned to keep these people (over 62% of which were native born American citizens) until the war was over. German American internment and Italian American internment camps also existed, sometimes sharing facilities with the Japanese Americans. In all, somewhere between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were subject to this mass exclusion program

In one of the most famous photos of
the internment period, the Mochida family
waits for their bus to the internment
camps, cir. 1944

While the facilities designed to hope these interred citizens met international laws of the time, they still left much to be desired. Many camps were built quickly by civilian contractors during the summer of 1942 based on designs for military barracks, making the buildings poorly equipped for cramped family living. Barded wire, communal toilets and bathrooms, military-style cots, and limited food rations completed the feel of a military camp. Armed guards were posted at the camps, which were all in remote and isolated areas far from major population centers. Despite the military presents, internees were typically allowed to stay with their families, and were treated well unless they violated the rules. Military documents do record instances of guards shooting internees who reportedly attempted to walk outside the fences without permission and it was the bad press from such incidents that forced camp commanders to loosen movement restrictions on the Japanese-American inside. Eventually, some families were authorized to return to their hometowns in under supervision of a sponsoring American family or agency whose loyalty what without question. Despite such attempts at civility, conditions in the camps remains poor with many internees suffering from disease, malnutrition, and psychological injury. Families that returned to their homes found them looted and their property sold off without their consent serving to compound the feelings of loss. Despite such feelings, 20,000 Japanese-American men opted to prove their patriotism and loyalty by serving in the US Armed Forces during World War II, most notably with the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which served with distinction in the European theatre.

A 1944 photo of the Santa Anita
Assembly (Internment) Center in
California 

By 1944, critics of the internment strategy took their grievances to the US Supreme Court. The Court, in two separate decisions, declared that the language put forth in Executive Order 9066 was unclear and ruled unanimously that loyal citizens of the United States, regardless of cultural descent, could not be detained without cause. By 1945, the camps began to closed with former internees receiving $25 and a train ticket to their former homes. While the majority returned to their former lives, some of the Japanese-Americans, sickened by their experience, left the United States altogether and emigrated to Japan. Despite this, many Japanese-American pushed for a redress of their issues by the Federal government. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee, totaling $1.2 billion dollars. In 1992, Reagan's successor, President George H.W. Bush, offered a formal apology to the families of the interred. Today many state and local officials offer remembrances on a annual basis to remember the lessons of the internment episode in American history for the next generation.

The Movie

Kazuo Miyamoto at his trial
(played by Korean actor Rick Yune )

Set on the fictional San Piedro Island in the northern Puget Sound region of the Washington state coast in 1950, the plot of the film revolves around the murder case of fisherman Kazuo Miyamoto, a Japanese-American who served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, who is accused of killing Carl Heine Jr., another local fisherman. Mixed in with the anti-Japanese sentiment from the war and Miyamoto's fight for justice is a love story between Ishmael Chambers (Ethan Hawke) and Miyamoto's wife, Hatsue. The two had shared a brief but passionate love affair prior to the war despite the racial tension between their families. When Pearl Harbor is bombed, Hatsue and her family are shipped off to an internment camp where she breaks off her relationship with Ishmael and marries Miyamoto. Back home, Ishmael tries to forget his bitter and broken heart by working for his father's newspaper and, eventually, going off to war himself, where he looses an arm during fighting in the Pacific. His bitterness still remains at the time of the trial and he allows his pain to cloud his judgement about Miyamoto's guilt or innocents.

Ishmael (Ethan Hawke) and Hatsue
(played by Japanese actress
Youki Kudoh) prior to the war

Another major theme of the film is the prejudice that still existests along the West Coast even though the war is over and Miyamoto is a decorated war veteran. The trial storyline and the prosecution's case centers on Ole Jurgensen, an elderly man who sold his strawberry field to Carl Jr. The land was originally owned by Carl Heine Sr. and his wife Etta who allowed the Miyamotos to live in a house on the property and picked strawberries for work. It is revealed that prior to the war, Miyamoto and Carl Jr. were close friends as children and that Carl's father eventually approached Carl Sr. about purchasing seven acres of the farm. Carl Sr. agreed to the purchase and payments for the land are made over a ten-year period before the war starts and the Miyamotos are relocated. In 1944, Carl Sr. dies and Etta, who had never really approved of the land sale in the first place, sells off the land to Ole, who eventually sells it back to Carl Jr.. When Miyamoto returned from the war, he is extremely bitter toward Etta for selling off his family's land and approaches Carl Jr. to try to buy the land back. During the trial, the land is presented as a family feud and the motivation behind Carl's murder.

Miyamoto's attorney Nels
Gudmundsson (played by Max von
Sydow)

Believing their is more to the story than a simple land feud, Ishmael searches local maritime records and discovers that on the night that Carl Heine died a freighter had passed through the channel where Carl had been fishing. Ishmael realises that Carl must have been thrown overboard by the force of the freighter's wake and finds evidence on Carl's boat to support his theory. Despite his bitterness towards Hatsue, Ishmael takes his new evidence to the judge who frees Miyamoto and dismissed the case. While the film is quiet accurate in its presentation of the events leading up to the internment of the Japanese-American, some of the best scenes in the film don't involve the Japanese-American actors at all. For me, the movie is stole by the acting of Max von Sydow who portrays Miyamoto's elderly defense attorney, Nels Gudmundsson. Besides his cleaver one-liners and spirited defense of his client, von Sydow's character steals the spotlight from Hawke and the other actors with his passionate closing argument, citing the historical implications of the trial even thought it is one small event in a small community. Overall, the film is very well done and worthwhile watch to see how bigger historical events impacted everyday people.

[To see the trailer for this film, click below]