-
Before the Europeans took over Puget Sound, there were Native Americans already living there. "They sailed in search of the NorthWest Passage ...[they] sent a work detail ashore to cull a fresh spar pole from among the hemlocks at the water's edge. Its members were murdered almost immediately upon setting foot on the beach by a party or Nootka slave raiders"(Guterson, ch 1).
-
A group of lost Spaniards went to Puget Sound by accident while trying to find the Northwest passage and were killed by slave raiders. "San Piedro was an island of five-thousand damp souls, named by lost spaniards who moored offshore in the year 1603"(Guterson, ch 1).
-
A law passed to keep Asian and other immigrants from owning land/property and discourage them from staying here "The witness makes reference to the current defunct statute of the state of Washington which made it illegal at the time for which she speaks an alien, a noncitizen, to hold a title to real estate(Guterson, ch 9)."
-
A battle in the Central Pacific region with the US against Japanese in the Pacific theater of WWII. The attack was part of a whole operation called "operation Galvanic" that was meant to take over all of the Gilbert Islands. " It occurred to Ishmael for the first time in his life, that such destruction could be beautiful. The reckless water, the frenzied wind, the snow, the downed trees, the boats dashed against their sunken docks--it was harsh and beautiful and disorderly"(Guterson, ch 30).
-
A surprise attack by Japanese Air Forces on pearl harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii
"it's very bad... a bombing raid...the Japanese airfare has bombed everything...it is bad for us... it is terribly bad...There is nothing else on the radio... everything is Pearl Harbor"(guterson, ch 13). -
Propaganda was used to recruit soldiers to the military and convince others to save some materials for the war and how they could help without being on the battlefields. "It's all propaganda...they want us to be able to kill them with no remorse, to make them less of people. None of it is fair or true but at the same time I find myself thinking about it whenever I look at Miyamoto sitting there, staring straight ahead"(guterson, ch 24).
-
Internment camps relocated and isolated Japanese Americans after pearl harbor because President Roosevelt was suspicious of potential spies. "The train at 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. Fujiko had imagined, shutting her eyes, that the sandstorm battering the bus, was the rain of home"(Guterson, ch 14).
-
A letter from a wife or girlfriend to a soldier to say she wants to break up because there is usually another man involved. "Fujiko took her letter from her daughter's lap and ripped it neatly down the middle. " Write your own letter...Tell him the truth about things. Put all of this in your history. Tell him the truth so you can move forward. Put that Bakunin boy aware now(guterson, 231).""
-
Major war between Imperial Japanese Army and United States Marine on the island of Okinawa and had some of the most casualties. "It was under these circumstances that he heard about the death of Carl Heine, a man who survived the sinking of the Canton and who, like Horace himself, had survived Okinawa-- only to die, it now appeared, in a gill-netting boat accident (Guterson, ch 5).
-
USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii remembers the soldiers who passed away in the battle.
