Ishmael Chambers Timeline and Summary

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• We meet Ishmael as a reporter on the Carl Heine murder trial (in addition to reporting, he actually runs the paper, the San Piedro Review, himself). He seems to have some connection to the defendant's wife, Hatsue Miyamoto; he tries to offer her a shoulder when he sees her in the courthouse. However, she just tells him to go away.
• Through Ishmael's rampant daydreaming when he's supposed to be watching the trial, we learn that Hatsue and Ishmael were childhood friends and high school sweethearts. Their romance ended when Hatsue was sent off to a Japanese internment camp with the U.S.'s entry into World War II.
• When the trial adjourns early on the second day because of a snowstorm, Ishmael heads out to a coast guard office to do some research on previous storms for a story on the current weather nonsense. While he's out there, he discovers evidence that strongly indicates Carl Heine died by accident (rather than as a result of murder).
• However, he decides to sit on that information, apparently under the assumption that he might be able to weasel his way back into Hatsue's affections in other ways—ways that would still leave the door open for her husband to be executed for a crime he didn't commit, taking him conveniently out of the way (he never says this outright, but we are good at reading between the lines here at Shmoop).
• After his research at the coast guard office, Ishmael heads to his mother's house, where he and Helen talk about the fact that he's always so brutally unhappy. Helen doesn't understand why Ishmael can't just move on with his life (as other war veterans have done). Of course, since she never knew about Ishmael's relationship with Hatsue, she doesn't have a big piece of the puzzle of his misery.
• The next day, he finally comes to his senses regarding the evidence he found at the coast guard office and gives it to Hatsue. The evidence leads to Kabuo's full exoneration. Ishmael lets Hatsue go, finally, and is sitting down to write up the story of the trial when the novel closes.