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The California Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it, but permitted leases lasting up to three years ‘“let it be known that this court is not concerned with any perpetrators of violations against our state’s now—blessedly so—defunct Alien Land Law’” (Guterson, 123). Judge Lew Fielding explain the irrelevance of the Alien Land Law in significance with the trial as it no longer existed.
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When Britain and France went to war with Germany in 1939, Americans were divided over whether to join the war effort. It wouldn't be until the surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that the United States would be thrust into World War II. “He remembered the expression on Hatsue’s face when he told her he had enlisted” (Guterson, 163). Kabuo had enlisted into the U.S army to prove his loyalty to the country as a Japanese-American.
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The Attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. ‘“The Japanese Air Force has bombed everything... There is nothing else on the radio. Everything is Pearl Harbor’” (Guterson, 177). George Yamashita’s mother (in whose daughter goes to the same Buddhist Chapel with Hatsue Miyamoto) told the people gathered there the news about Pearl Harbor.
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The Battle of Tarawa was a battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that was fought on 20–23 November 1943. It took place at the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands, and was part of Operation Galvanic, the U.S. invasion of the Gilberts “On the second day his company was assembled on the top deck and told that they were moving toward Tarawa atoll, where they would go ashore at Betio, a strongly defended island” (Guterson, 236). This took place the night before the battle.
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The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was a major battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by United States Marine and Army forces against the Imperial Japanese Army. “It was under these circumstances that he heard about the death of Carl Heine... who, like Horace himself, had survived Okinawa—only to die, it now appeared, in a gill-netting boat accident” (Guterson, 47). Horace survived the Okinawa attack with Carl Heine.
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Feb. 21, 1942- March 20, 1946
The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in concentration camps in the western interior of the country of about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific Coast “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” (Guterson 198-199).
Hisao, the father of Hatsue. -
The memorial, built in 1962, is visited by more than two million people annually. Accessible only by boat, it straddles the sunken hull of the battleship without touching it.
