The play takes place on San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, in coastal Washington, a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. In 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese-American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. Snow Falling on Cedars opens in a courtroom as the trial begins.
In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man’s guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries—memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo’s wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community of strawberry farmers was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.
