Although the shortest chapter in the entire novel, I feel that “Confession” is one of the most significant, because the reader gets a close look at what Japanese people went through emotionally. The other chapters are very superficial, and the reader has to do close reading in every chapter to pick up on carefully placed emotion, symbolism, irony, and underlying message. The final chapter of the book is more up front and in the readers face. How different this chapter is compared to the rest is made evident right off the bat, because it is written in first person as opposed to third person. This is a dramatic transition and makes what the father is saying more direct and personable, and the accusations in the false confession more mind boggling and ironic. At multiple points throughout the chapter it almost feels like the father is addressing you, the reader, as the accuser. There is a sense of confusion and anger in this chapter that is not as evident in the other chapters. The reader can tell from the way the father is speaking that he literally cannot believe everything he is being accused of, and that he is angry that the accusations never really seem to stop. The father is definitely the every man character in this chapter. Although he may have been accused of more than one terrorist act, it is difficult to fathom that he was actually accused of doing all of these things. Some of the accusations are probably what he heard other men being accused of; men that he could relate to and that he understood on an intimate level, because they knew exactly what he was going through. The father, along with all of the other men falsely imprisoned, lost their sense of self, their identity. They know longer knew what to believe, because their were so many lies going around, and because the truth could not save them. The words coming out of their mouth did not matter; their race and ethnicity did. The fact that these men were Japanese was more important than the type of men they had become. I believe this is the significance of the false confession. The father admitting to “doing” all of these terrorist acts was his way of rebelling against the system and the way they tortured him. He made a mockery of what the system put him through by showing society how ridiculous and absurd what was happening and what the Japanese were being accused of really was. One of my favorite parts of the entire book was the sarcasm and cynical attitude it ended with.
“So go ahead and lock me up. Take my children. Take my wife. Freeze my assets. Seize my crops. Search my office. Ransack my house. Cancel my insurance. Auction off my business. Hand over my lease. Assign me a number. Inform me of my crime. Too short, too dark, too ugly, too proud. Put it down in writing – is nervous in conversation, always laugh loudly at the wrong time, never laughs at all - and I’ll sign on the dotted line. Is treacherous and cunning, is ruthless, is cruel. And if they ask you someday what it was I most wanted to say, please tell them, if you would, it was this:
I’m sorry.
There. That’s it. I’ve said it. Now can I go?”
This ending was just the icing on the cake for me, for both this chapter and the entire novel. The father basically gave the system the middle finger and said how can you really do this to me in a “free” country. It is absurd and unethical. He said what they wanted to hear, because the truth did not matter.
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