DB2 CHARACTER datatype issue in JPA

I am working with DB2 Universal database having lots of tables with columns of datatype CHARACTER. Length of these columns is variable (greater than 1 e.g. 18). As i execute a Native query using JPA it selects only first character of the column. Seems CHARACTER datatype is mapped to Java Character.

How can i get full contents in DB column. I can not change the database bening on Vendor side. Also there are two sides of problem:

- When using JPQL
- Using native DB query (no pojo is used in this case)

i am using Hibernate implementation of JPA provided by spring.

Thanks