Ishmael’s a 31-year-old WWII veteran who lost an arm in battle and hasn’t quite recovered from the psychological traumas he incurred during his military career. As Kabuo harbors resentment towards Etta for her cruel decision to sell the land, the prosecution claims that this was Kabuo’s motivation for killing Carl, despite the fact that the two were friends as children.Ĭovering the trial is Ishmael Chambers, the editor of San Piedro’s only paper, the San Piedro Review.

Unlike her husband, Etta is hateful and bigoted, and sells all of the land before Kabuo, returned from his imprisonment and military tour, can have a chance to reclaim what is rightfully his. His wife, Etta, gains control of the land. When the Miyamotos are forced to relocate to an internment camp after the attack on Pearl Harbor, they miss their last two payments. Before the war, Kabuo’s father, a sharecropper, had purchased seven acres of land from Carl Heine Sr., Carl’s father. Informing the court’s opinion of Kabuo’s demeanor and guilt, too, is the land feud between Kabuo’s and Carl’s families that is thought to be Kabuo’s primary motivation for murder.

Kabuo’s trial, and the evidence that leads to his initial arrest, demonstrates the great impact biased “facts” have on the islanders’ notion of larger truths. Especially since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, San Piedro residents have adopted a malicious, skeptical, and racist attitude towards their Japanese neighbors. However, Kabuo’s Japanese ancestry causes much of the courtroom to regard his calm, unreadable demeanor in a more negative light. Like Carl Heine and the rest of San Piedro’s fishermen, Kabuo is reserved and restrained.

San Piedro is a small-knit (though judgmental) community of strawberry farmers and fishermen, and Kabuo’s trial brings to light the racist undertones that cut through the islands foggy, cedar-covered landscape. Carl, a war veteran, is well-liked in the community and embodies the ideal, revered San Piedro fisherman: he is respectable, quiet, and he keeps to himself.

Kabuo, a local fisherman of Japanese descent, is accused of murdering Carl Heine, another local fisherman. In the San Piedro courtroom, on December 6, 1954, the trial of Kabuo Miyamoto is underway.

David guterson