The Role Of Race In Essay, Research Paper
The racism, unprovoked hate, and misguided patriotism aimed at Kabuo Miyamoto is remnants from the veteran s of WWII who cannot let the war go because of the deep emotional ties to the memories. Since there have been people who are different, there has existed an intolerance and sometimes a baseless hatred towards those who chose to, and are sometimes forced to be, different from the normal . There are several reasons for the racism towards Kabuo Miyamoto in Snow Falling On Cedars. Mrs. Heine s reason for her unbridled hate was that she thought that the Japanese were inferior to white people and that they should never have been allowed to immigrate. Some of the fisherman featured in the story simply had a fear of the unknown and didn t know what to think so they interpret the foreigner as a threat. The coroner that looked over the body of Carl Heine after the murder stated that he had seen injuries almost exactly like those sustained by Mr. Heine in World War II caused by a gun butt to the head or by a long stick.
Mrs. Heine s hate for the Japanese stems from her childhood and is unexplained but for whatever unknown reason, she cannot forgive any race but her own. Looking at this and the year in which this all took place, we can easily say that she was always one to agree with the country of her birth. Not to say that she is a Nazi sympathizer but at least one to believe in the causes of her motherland. They missed payments for 3 months, said Mrs. Heine, lying while under oath. This shows how much she dislikes Kabuo because she is willing to lie under oath and risk imprisonment so she can see somebody of the Japanese decent take the blame for her son s death. At the very least she is over-embellishing the truth to an unjust end. In this she is using her seat in the witness stand as a soapbox to further penetrate her beliefs that those with white colored skin are supreme beings to all others.
The fisherman in San Piedro are shocked at the murder of the friend Carl. They need a scapegoat and what better scapegoat than an immigrant whom they never trusted from the start because of his physical attributes and background? After Art (the sheriff) presents his theory that Carl may have been murdered the first thing out of the mouths of the fisherman are I saw Kabuo Miyamoto near him last night. Dense fog, if somebody woulda killed someone, it would been last night. . Now this statement doesn t directly implicate Kabuo in the murder but it does put to light the fact that Kabuo was seen with the deceased and had opportunity, and as it would later turn out, motive.
“…Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
These powerful words were uttered by Martin Luther King in the midst of the racial unrest of the 1960s. This unrest is congruent with the racial profiling and racism shown to Kabuo Miyamoto from his arrest to (and during) his trial. The hate that came with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941 is still fresh in the minds of the people of the United States and they feel that it is up to them to themselves to serve justice.