Snow Falling on Cedars - Movie Review Example

The traumatic mass movement of the Japanese from the West Coast began. Under the infamous Executive Order 9066, the army was empowered to oversee the "enemy alien problem." During this period, the Americans were fighting hard against the Japanese residing in the Pacific, the Americans had a notion that most of the Japanese were spies and could turn out to be a big threat to the nation. (Book mice)claims that “Although prejudice and discrimination played major roles in the internment, economics and jealousy did also, as many Californians were jealous of the economic success that the Japanese-American farmers and store owners enjoyed” This make it clear that during the Japanese internment period the Americans had a mixed feeling of war threat, national insecurity, jealousy and prejudice running through their head.

Answer to question two The movie “snow falling on cedars” has explicit sex scenes and violence related to Japanese internment. According to (Renteln,618-648) “In particular, through consideration of various historical documents I argue that a deeply rooted fear of sexual congress between the races consciously or unconsciously motivated some of the actions which led to the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans”. The author argues that the main factor which motivated Americans to take a bold and heinous step towards the Japanese race is the fear of sexual conquest by the Japanese upon fellow Americans.

There was this great prejudice going on in the minds of Americans towards Japanese as they were of different race and their prosperity in every sense could tamper the identity of whites and America. The Americans were afraid of the mixing in the race and did not want to lose their white culture to the Asians. Finally, the argument of Renteln reflects in the ideas depicted in the movie “snow falling on cedar” Answer to question three There can be two sides to the Japanese internment that happened in America during World War II.

Americans wanted to survive against the threat of another attack from the Japanese and considered the whole Japanese to be their enemy. They were blindly prejudiced and biased against the Asian race and attempted to destabilize them in a possible manner. American government in this hysterical situation forgot that most of the Japanese residing in the country were American citizens. The cruelty done towards the Japanese was unfair but can be justified by the saying which goes “everything is fair in love and war”.