Although nearly all the white characters in the book seem to racist in some way, Etta Heine seems to be the most unsympathetic. Etta is Carl Heine's mother and Carl Heine senior's wife. She vehemently objected when her husband, Carl senior, agreed to sell seven acres of his strawberry farm to Zenhichi Miyamoto, Kabuo's father. Carle Decided to go through the transaction, against his wife’s will. However, following the bombing of Pearl Harbour, all the Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camp, which meant it was extremely difficult for the Miyamotos to pay the rest of the sum owed to the Heines. Carle Heine Senior kindly refused to take Zenhichi’s savings at such a crucial time and agreed to hold on to the land for them until they come out. However, following the death of Carle Heine Senior, Etta Heine decided to sell the farm, including the Miyamoto’s seven acres. Etta’s legal but morally dubious decision to sell the land to Ole Jugerson, and the San Piedro community’s happy willingness to purchase the possessions of desperate Japanese-Americans during the war, are testament to the separation between morality and legality presented in “Snow falling on cedars”. This decision made Etta seem not only selfish, but coldhearted and blatantly discriminatory towards the Japanese-Americans.
It is ironic that Etta herself is not truly a pure American, and only a couple of decades ago, during the First World War, her very own race would of had experienced a similar wave of hated and discrimination. However, Etta felt that she would be able to secure her claim to American identity by participating in the exclusion of another immigrant group. It seems to me that she does not really have any real basis for hating the American-Japanese other than plain ignorance. The other San Piedrons at least have a patriotic reason to hate the Japanese immigrants, but Etta herself is not a pure American. So we can only come to the conclusion that Etta Heine is basically a cold hearted, ignorant and racist individual.
It is obvious that some of Etta’s hatred for the Japanese is due to the fact that Etta does not like the farming lifestyle, which the Japanese take a great role in, in San Piedro. The white community have been taking great advantage of their Japanese American neighbors for years. The first generation Asians were forbidden to own their own land and often had to survive through wage labour. They constituted a large base of permanent cheap labour for the annual strawberry picking harvest. Etta was more of a city girl and did not like the rural lifestyle and defianately opposed to the Japanese intergrating into society and especially becoming friends with her husband. At her first opportunity she sold the farm and retreated from the lifestyle that made her come into contact with the American Japanese workers. I think that she could not express her feelings to Carle Heine Senior, so she expressed her hatred for the lifestyle by hating the American Japanese that aided the lifestyle to be successful. We see the Japanese in the novel to be descent, hard working people, which makes it easier for us to judge Etta. It is in her nature to be cruel and ruthless in her ways.
