Snow Falling on Cedars — United States
A Japanese-American fisherman is tried for murder on a Pacific Northwest island in the late 1940s — the case haunted by wartime Japanese-American internment and the racial trauma it inflicted on the community.
Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 authorised the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were US citizens. San Juan Island's Japanese-American farming and fishing community was forcibly removed to internment camps. Most lost their property and businesses. The Supreme Court upheld the internment in Korematsu v. United States (1944), a decision not formally repudiated until 2018.