In the book, Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson. There are two characters that are different from one another, but in many ways are actually similar. The characters Kabuo Miyamoto, and Ishmael Chambers are different from each other but at the same time are parallel characters. Both experienced being in World War 2, loved a woman, Hatsue Imada, and can't forget past memories.
Kabuo Miyamoto meets Hatsue Imada, in a Japanese internment camp when World War 2 begins. Kabuo finds himself in love with Hatsue and goes to where she is staying as many times and as long as he can and, "gaze at her while she was shaking her hair." Hatsue finds that Kabuo would make the perfect husband her family had always wanted her to be with and soon marries him and lets go of the fact that she had a relationship with a man, by the name of Ishmael Chambers.
Since the war started Ishmael Chambers, a white man, had to see Hatsue, his secret child hood love leave him to go to the internment camps. Ishmael believed that their ethnicities would not get in the way of their love, which he felt was so strongly there. He felt that their love could not be erased, " and now must go on forever." Hatsue did not feel that they were right and she knew it could not be, because they were of a different race. Hatsue was brought up to be a proper wife and mother for a good, strong, Japanese man and his children. At first, Hatsue rebelled against who her family told her she was, "I don't want to be Japanese!" She soon does not rebel any longer and goes the way she is wanted to go and tells Ishmael that they could no longer see each other again.
Both Ishmael and Kabuo leave to become soldiers in the war against Japan and later, instead of returning as loving innocent boys, they return as hardened men. Ishmael loses his arm, "fucking Japs!" and starts hating everyone who is Japanese. He blames them all for the war and even hated Hatsue for it, " -he hated her with all his heart.