“Who can limit our future? It depends on what we make it.”
The story opens with a flashback to Dr. Sada Hoki’s youth when his father would routinely remind him that the islands of the South Seas were the stepping stones to Japan’s future. When the son asked the father where Japan would step from those islands, the reply is idealistic and aspirational. Being reminded of that vision of a dynamic future helped to shape the child into the ambitious, nationalistic, and erudite Sadao we meet, but it is also a statement that foreshadows the completely sudden and life-altering "future" that is about the wash up on the beach for Sadao. He will be faced with a choice of what to "make it," though it is not exactly something he could have expected or desired.
“…if the man were whole I could turn him over to the police without difficulty. I care nothing for him. He is my enemy. All Americans are my enemy. And he is only a common fellow. You see how foolish his face is. But since he is wounded …”
Sadao knows on an intellectual and emotional level that he hates the wounded white man before him, but he cannot allow these feelings to take precedence over his ethical understanding of his profession. His need to tend to the wounded man is deeper than feelings of racism, nationalism, fear, and disgust; he is a consummate professional, unerringly dedicated and steadfast in his convictions. He does not befriend the man or come to like him in any way, which Buck implies would be unrealistic, but he will treat his wounds and save his life because it is the right thing to do.
The unexpected warmth of the past few days had at night drawn heavy fog from the cold waves. Sadao watched mists hide outlines of a little island near the shore and come creeping up the beach below the house, wreathing around the pines...It was at this time that both of them saw something black come out of the mists.
Buck's evocation of dense fog curling about the house, beach, and pines is symbolic of the obfuscation of traditional notions of right and wrong, of the confusion and complication of Sadao and Hana's sense of nationalism and racial pride with feelings of compassion, morality, and medical ethics. Nothing is clear here; nothing is revealed. Both Sadao and Hana grope in the "fog" of their feelings and convictions, constantly experiencing doubt and anxiety. It is an excellent foreshadowing and symbolic device that alerts the reader to the moral haze they are about to encounter.
The Americans were full of prejudice, and it had been bitter to live in it, knowing himself their superior…But then, white people were repulsive, of course. It was a relief to be openly at war with them at last.
These are among the last thoughts of the doctor in the story; he recalls not just his repugnance toward white people on pure biological terms, but also certain specific individuals cementing this prejudice while he lived in America. What is most fascinating is that these final thoughts, immersed in a sea of nationalism, recall a dull but inoffensive professor and his overly talkative wife who attempted to be kind, an anatomy teacher who constantly reminded his students to be merciful with the surgeon’s scalpel, and a landlady who—though ignorant and dirty—was the only person to open her home to a Japanese tenant, also nursing him through a bad case of the flu. There is nuance here and Sadao struggles a bit with it, knowing he was a victim of racism and prejudice, yet also holding similar views of his own—yet also admitting, perhaps unknowingly, that they were not all bad. He ends the story by feeling grateful to be at war but wondering why he could not kill the boy; all of this is confusing, relatable, and complex.
