Racism and Prejudice Theme Analysis

Snow Falling on Cedars takes place before, during, and after World War II on the fictional island of San Piedro off the coast of Washington in the United States. During this time, Japan’s alignment with Nazi Germany resulted in a tremendous amount of prejudice within the U.S. against its Japanese population. The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese military in 1941 escalated these existing racial tensions. Fearing espionage and the possibility of future attacks, the government ordered the relocation of people of Japanese descent to internment camps across the western United States, which the novel gives a fictionalized account of. In Snow Falling on Cedars, Guterson suggests that prejudice towards Japanese people during WWII had a deep and lasting impact on American society, as demonstrated by the racially motivated trial and investigation that befalls Kabuo, a fisherman of Japanese descent, when he’s accused of the murder of Carl Heine.

One marked example of prejudice in the novel is the double standards applied to stoicism, or enduring life’s hardships quietly and without external signs of suffering. When the novel’s white characters are silent, it’s perceived as a marker of their inner strength and character. Guterson reveals early on that “on San Piedro the silent-toiling, autonomous gill-netter became the collective image of the good man. He who was too gregarious, who spoke too much and too ardently desired the company of others, their conversation and their laughter, did not have what life required.” Among the islanders, silence among white fishermen is seen in a positive light, a signal of quiet strength. The late Carl Heine is an example of one of these revered, silent white men. Art Moran, the sheriff, observes: “He was silent, yes, and grave like his mother, but the war had a part in that […].” Moran sees Carl’s unreadable demeanor as acceptable and even expected.

In contrast, the islanders are immediately suspicious of Kabuo’s silence, revealing their underlying prejudice against him as a man of Japanese descent. The prosecutor Alvin Hooks’s closing statement paints Kabuo as a “strong, cold, unfeeling man.” While islanders see silence as an indicator of good character in white men, Kabuo’s silence is somehow menacing, suggesting that that this is actually an issue of race. Hooks implores the jury to “Look into his eyes, consider his face, and ask yourselves what your duty is as citizens of this community.” When he asks the jury to “consider his face,” he draws the jury’s attention to Kabuo racial difference—not necessarily his stoic facial expression—playing on the prejudice he knows the jury holds. Guterson further exemplifies this double standard as the jurors convene after the lawyers’ closing statement to discuss the case’s verdict. One of the jurors remarks: “Wouldn’t put it past him, […] The man looks damn sly to me.” Like Carl Heine, Kabuo is a fisherman, a quiet man, and a World War II veteran. But unlike Carl, Kabuo’s race prevents him from receiving the benefit of the doubt.

Kabuo had initially believed his stoicism would make him appear favorably in court, but he soon recognizes his naiveté: “It had seemed to Kabuo that his detachment from this world was somehow self-explanatory, that the judge, the jurors, and the people in the gallery would recognize the face of a war veteran who had forever sacrificed his tranquility in order that they might have theirs. Now, looking at himself, scrutinizing his face, he saw that he appeared defiant instead.” The court’s racial bias prevents them from seeing Kabuo’s silence in a positive light.

Prejudice plays out outside of the murder trial, as well. Throughout the novel, ethnic German islanders’ potential loyalty to Nazi Germany is never even considered while the ethnically Japanese islanders’ allegiances are called immediately into question. Despite the fact that the Japanese islanders had been their fellow workers, neighbors, and friends, most white islanders feel no remorse when residents of Japanese decent are forced to uproot their lives and relocate to concentration camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, reasoning “that this exiling of the Japanese was the right thing to do,” and “that the Japanese must go for reasons that made sense: there was a war on and that changed everything.” In the eyes of many white islanders, race alone is enough to be skeptical of their Japanese neighbors. But not all of the white islanders were born in America; in fact, Carl Heine’s mother, Etta (who harbors immensely hateful prejudices toward the Japanese islanders) is from Germany and speaks with a thick accent. Following the logic of many white islanders, that “there was a war on and that changed everything,” ethnic Germans should be equally suspicious. Yet none of the prejudice directed at Kabuo, his family, and the rest of San Piedro’s Japanese population is extended to the island’s ethnic Germans. Islanders take for granted their German neighbors’ loyalty to the U.S. because these people are white and of European descent. In other words, because the German characters look more stereotypically American (that is, white) than the Japanese characters, it’s assumed that they are more committed to upholding American ideals and values.

The prejudice exhibited on San Piedro shows that racism is not an amorphous set of discriminatory beliefs, but is a serious warping of perspective that can result in real, lasting consequences. For Kabuo Miyamoto, the San Piedro residents’ racism results in a biased, unfair trial that robs him of many months of his life. The residents’ racist double standards and hypocrisies demonstrate the extent to which prejudice saturates the fabric of a society, even infiltrating its institutions and norms.