Snow Falling on Cedars Imprisonment Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

It had been, he saw now, a war marriage, hurried into because there was no choice, and because both of them felt the rightness of it. They had not known each other more than a few months, though he had always admired her from a distance, and it seemed to him, when he thought about it, that their marriage had been meant to happen. His parents approved, and hers approved, and he was happy to leave for the war in the knowledge that she was waiting for him and would be there when he returned. And then he had returned, a murderer, and her fear that he would no longer be himself was realized. (11.43)

Kabuo and Hatsue had married when they were imprisoned in Manzanar, and they did it in a hurry because "there was no choice." Not only did they have to do it in jail, but also, they couldn't even pick the timing because Kabuo had to head off to war. It's not exactly how one grows up picturing their special day...

Quote #5

The arrested men rode on a train with boarded windows—prisoners had been shot at from railroad sidings—from Seattle to a work camp in Montana. Hisao wrote a letter to his family each day; the food, he said, was not very good, but they were not really being mistreated. They were digging trenches for a water system that would double the size of the camp. Hisao had gotten a job in the laundry room. Robert Nishi worked in the camp kitchen. (14.50)

Prior to the Imada family's incarceration at Manzanar, Hisao got a jump on the "party" and was sent to a work camp in Montana. Supposedly, he was sent there for possession of prohibited objects (basically, though, the charges were bogus).

Quote #6

The train stopped at a place called Mojave in the middle of an interminable, still desert. They were herded onto buses at eight-thirty in the morning, and the buses took them north over dusty roads for four hours to a place called Manzanar. (15.5)

This is our first introduction to Manzanar, the camp where Hatsue, Kabuo, and other Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.