“Shatter Like a Pearl” is the fifth episode of the second season of the TV show “The Terror”, which was named “The Terror: Infamy”, and follows “The Weak Are Meat“. It’s broadcast in the USA on AMC Studios and in other nations on Amazon Prime Video.

Note. This article contains some spoilers about “Shatter Like a Pearl”.

At the internment camp, the Japanese-Americans are forced to complete a questionnaire that is supposed to establish their loyalty to the USA but two of the questions generate a lot of arguments and resistance among them. New translators arrive in Guadalcanal but one of them behaves strangely. Chester Nakayama (Derek Mio) finds out what happened to his sons while he and his fellow translator Arthur Ogawa (Marcus Toji) interrogate a Japanese prisoner who claims he’s possessed by a yurei.

“Shatter Like a Pearl” focuses again on this season’s historical element between the internment camp and Guadalcanal. Only a few scenes are explicitly connected to the supernatural element while there are discussions concerning the entity called yurei between Chester Nakayama and the prisoner Tetsuya Ota (Kazuya Tanabe). The internment camp drama also concerns Luz Ojeda (Cristina Rodlo), who at the beginning of the episode has a ghostly aspect, in her case linked to Latin American iconography, to the point that the camp’s children nicknamed her the ghost woman.

The historical element concerns above all a questionnaire provided to Japanese-Americans interned in the camp containing 30 questions. In particular, questions 27 and 28 made the difference: the people who answered no, even if only in protest against the mistreatment suffered even the ones born in the USA, were accused of treason while the men who answered yes became available to serve in the American military. The theme of the identity of the Japanese-Americans and the differences among them, sometimes at a generational level, has been explored since the beginning of the season, in “Shatter Like a Pearl” is further developed in connection with the questionnaire.

This part of the episode was also developed through the romantic relationship between Ken Uehura (Christopher Naoki Lee) and Amy Yoshida (Miki Ishikawa). Unfortunately this type of relationship doesn’t seem to be very well developed in the season, perhaps because it’s used to develop plot elements in certain ways without creating strong foundations for love bonds that make them believable.

In the part of “Shatter Like a Pearl” set in Guadalcanal, Chester Nakayama interrogates a prisoner and after facing the American soldiers’ hostility he finds himself in a similar situation because he’s considered a traitor by the Japanese too. Despite this beginning of his task, the confrontation between Chester and Tetsuya Ota ends up being perhaps the most interesting part of the episode from the human point of view.

Reaching mid-season, “The Terror: Infamy” seems to still have a lot to show. The ending of “Shatter Like a Pearl” added more questions about the yurei and the answers that will be offered in the next episodes will show if the supernatural element will prove to be at the same level as the historical one.

[ad name=”AmazonPrimeVideo”]