To be an American means that a person is born on American soil. The American Dream is a lofty idea in which equal opportunity is present to any American who wants to achieve their highest goals and aspirations. Throughout history, there is a common misconception that lies in what is the American dream. In the past, as Americans are trying to get rid of communism in other countries, they are trying to increase democracies. However, somehow, it led to them attaching new cultures with their own American culture. During and after World War II, there were many uncertainties for the Japanese Americans that came to Japan to give a chance to their own American Dream. Some of the Japanese Americans have sacrificed their lives in the internment camp after World War II ended to be defined as a Japanese American. Many movies explored the relations about American soldiers marrying Japanese women, but not a Japanese American man falling in love with a Caucasian woman. The Crimson Kimono shows in-depth on different viewpoints of people understanding the Japanese culture in their way. The Crimson Kimono address the question, "what truly defines an American?" Even though the Crimson Kimono, the movie was labeled as an interracial romance between Chris and Detective Joe Kojaku. It focused on the positive image of Japanese Americans rather than a negative one.

A positive image that this movie highlight is detective Joe is a hard-working detective figure out that Sugar Torch is dedicated to embracing the Geisha lifestyle. The Crimson Kimono follows a Japanese American detective, Joe Kojaku and his white American friend, Charlie Bancroft. The movie starts with the shooting of Sugar Torch, who is a stripper. The camera is cut when she collapses in the street with a close-up of Joe. At first, the connection is very unclear. Is Joe supposed to be his lover or the killer? However, in the next scene, the viewer can identify that he is a detective. Within this scene, Joe asks, "Did she have a Japanese boyfriend?" The reason why this question was being asked was that Torch had traditional Japanese artwork. Some of the pictures included were a karate expert breaking the bricks and Torch herself wearing a kimono. Looking at the picture, Joe decides to ask his friends at the karate club, and there Charlie and Joe saw Chris. Now Chris is an attractive young Caucasian woman. Joe, in general, seems to care about his detective job because he cares about Torch. There are some similarities that Joe sees in Torch is that she is being discriminated against but not for ethnicity.

Joe: "Listen, Charlie, I'm hanging on till we wrap it up…".

Charlie: Joe, will you take it easy? Nobody cares who killed that tramp.

Joe: Well, I do!

Another positive image of Japanese American people is when Joe lives in both worlds by maintaining his identity by working for the American government and ties with the Japanese community. This is shown through his ties with L.A.'s Little Tokyo, which leads him to Sugar's case. The interesting situation to point out of the movie is when Joe was having conversations in Little Tokyo, the Japanese were not translated. That is part of the reason why many people felt more comfortable and sided with Charlie as he only speaks English throughout the movie. Joe is a cultural mediator for American viewers who did not have any knowledge about Japanese culture.

A third positive image is the fact that viewers are taken on a tour of Little Tokyo to show the viewer the Japanese American Life. Many of the Japanese Americans speak English fluently which is a plus. Firstly, Joe decides to go to the karate dojo, where he talks to the karate sensei, who played a part in Torch's show. Eager to help Joe figure out who was going to play the Samurai in Torch's show, Willie confesses that a Korean man named Shuto, speaks Japanese. Nevertheless, Willie identifies the fact that "His Japanese is almost as bad as mine." The important fact here is that Willie and his friends all speak English with each other and undermines his Japanese languages. The movie shows in these instances that it is quite normal for Japanese Americans to undermine their own ability to speak Japanese as they are truly not Japanese. As for the white audiences, the movie shows that the Japanese Americans are trying to blend in with the White Culture.

The race is an issue in the film, but it is not exactly direct racism. The movie made it obvious that Joe and the rest of the Japanese – Americans fought for the U.S. in the Korean and were in the internment camp during World War II. Here is an actual excerpt from a general in 1942 writing about Japanese Americans. He said, "While many second and third-generation Japanese born on American soil, possessed of American citizenship, have become 'Americanized,' the racial strains are undiluted." This issue shows that the problem is not with Charlie, who is a Caucasian man, but with Joe, who is the Japanese American. At a certain point in the film, Joe has to meet with one of the people that hold information at the cemetery. Before the meeting takes place, the plot takes a stop. The camera shot lingers over to a memorial of the Nisei who died in World War II. The camera goes back to show Joe's talking to the Japanese man looking at his son's grave.

A fourth positive image is that the movie showed memorials of the people, and Joe's military service during the war are not questioned and special symbols of America's ability to absorb the racial and ethnicity mentally. The movie also justifies American foreign laws because of the internal support of democracy and justice. In the book, An Absent Presences: Japanese Americans in Postwar American Culture, 1945 – 1960, Caroline Chung Simpson writes, "Throughout the postwar years, the potential of interned Japanese Americans' presence in the body politic to disturb the problems of American identity remained a perpetual threat and irrepressible part of the negotiation between the needs of national history and the "incommensurability's" of racial memory (11)". There was no mention of the internment camp in the movie. The movie was quite about the fact that many Japanese and the second-generation Japanese Americans were affected by this camp. The Japanese community in Los Angeles would not be the same. If some of the Japanese Americans were not able to fight against the Japanese, it showed where their loyalty lay. No one mentioned how the Korean war affected the first generation of Americans in U.S. History.

Thus, The Crimson Kimono tried to make sure that the American audience to understand the social context of the Japanese American people. They tried to show this through their characters. The main character, Joe, was trying to figure is racial identity if he is truly an American. It turns out he is an American because he was born in American land. The only thing to add to this is that ethically, he is Japanese because of his parents. He also served in the Korean war and fought for the United States as that was his home. No matter what culture a person comes from, it is their culture that identifies that person.