David Guterson in his Snow Falling on Cedars weaves a fiction around the trial for the murder of Carl Heine, an American. Though a work of fiction, the novel remains faithful to its portrayal of the persistent prejudice against the Japanese Americans in various forms. Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese American, accused of the murder faces prejudice among the whites of San Piedro, a fictional island, with even the judges not being objective during the hearing of the case. The author traces, in this narration of the tale of a wronged individual, a series of betrayal meted out to the entire Japanese American community. This paper sees the prejudice against Kabuo in the trial as a smaller manifestation of the general racial hatred towards the entire section of the Japanese Americans, especially before and after the Second World War.

Snow Falling on Cedars is David Guterson's (1994) best-selling novel that sold over one million copies and has been translated into twenty-four languages. It took Guterson two years to arrive at the plot and eight years of research to write the novel. Guterson wrote the novel based on his personal experiences in the Pacific Northwest and was also heavily influenced by Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), a novel on the trial of an African-American accused of raping a white woman. Set in fictional San Piedro, an isolated island in Puget Sound, the novel revolves around the trial of Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese American who is accused of killing Carl Heine, an American. Rather than being a simple story of one man's innocence or guilt, the novel explores the racial stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination meted out to Kabuo and to the Japanese Americans in general. Guterson moves frequently from the present court testimonies to episodes picturing the Japanese Americans in 'internment camps' where they had to spend their life during the Second World War for no fault of theirs. Through the trial, he shows how the past still echoes in the present.

The larger role that history has to play in the trial becomes clear, as Guterson gives us the date of the trial—December 7, 1954—the thirteenth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing by the Japanese that initiated the war between Japan and America and consequently paved the way for the White government to intern 110,000 Japanese American citizens, though no act of sabotage was ever charged against even one person of Japanese ancestry in the US during the war. The trial takes place almost nine years after the war, and it is time enough for the San Piedro islanders to have changed their notions and perceptions about the Japanese Americans. But Guterson shows us that nothing has changed. The trial only gives a chance to the passive San Piedro islanders to be vocal about their prejudices against the Japanese Americans.

American Literature Journal, The Dirty Jap, David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars, Second World War, Japanese Americans, German American, Internment Camps, Japanese Culture, Japanese Folks, San Piedro Islanders.