No-No Boy

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No-No Boy
John Okada
1957

Introduction
Author Biography
Plot Summary
Characters
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
Further Reading

Introduction

No-No Boy, by John Okada, was first published in 1957. Set in Seattle after the end of World War II, it tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a young Japanese American who refused to serve in the U.S. armed forces during the war and was consequently imprisoned for two years. Now, following his release, Ichiro regrets the decision he made and fears that as a "no-no" boy he has no future in the United States, in spite of the fact that he was born and educated there. During the two weeks in his life described in the novel, he gradually learns to put aside his self-hatred and rediscover a sense of hope and belonging. No-No Boy made little impact on first publication, but interest in the novel grew in the 1970s, and in the early 2000s, it was established as one of the classic, pioneering Asian American novels. It opens a window on the Japanese American experience in the immediate postwar period, particularly on the generational conflict between the Issei (the first generation of Japanese immigrants, who were born in Japan) and the Nisei (the second generation, born in the United States), and the struggles of the Nisei to come to terms with their dual heritage. As such, the novel has relevance for the experience of many immigrant communities in the United States.

Author Biography

John Okada was born in Seattle, Washington, in September 1923, of Japanese American parents.

He attended Broadway High School, but his college education at the University of Washington was interrupted by World War II, during which Okada's family was interned in Idaho because they were Japanese American. Okada volunteered for service in the U.S. Air Force. He served in army intelligence, translating Japanese radio transmissions and dropping propaganda leaflets over Japanese-held islands in the South Pacific. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of sergeant.

Okada completed his education after the war, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Washington and a Master of Arts degree in sociology from Columbia University in 1949. After this he returned to Washington and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in library science. He worked in the business reference department of the Seattle Public Library and then moved to Detroit to take up a better paid position in the Detroit Public Library. He also worked as a technical writer for Chrysler Missile Operations in Michigan. During this time, Okada worked on writing fiction, resulting in the publication of his novel, No-No Boy, in 1957. The novel had no immediate impact. Okada then began work on a second novel, which focused on the experiences of the Issei, the first generation of Japanese to immigrate to the United States. He was never able to complete it. In the late 1960s, Okada served briefly as head of the circulation department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Okada died of a heart attack on February 20, 1971, at the age of forty-seven. He was survived by his wife, Dorothy, whom he met at Columbia University in the late 1940s, as well as a son and a daughter. After his death, his wife offered all his papers to the Japanese American Research Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. But the project refused to take an interest, and Okada's wife then burned the papers, which included the almost complete first draft of Okada's second novel.

It was only after his death that Okada's work began to be recognized. As of 2006, he was acknowledged as a powerful early voice in the recording and interpreting of Asian American experience.

Plot Summary

Preface

No-No Boy begins with a preface which explains that after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese in the United States became the objects of hostility and suspicion. They were rounded up and sent to internment camps.

Chapter 1

In Seattle just after the end of World War II, Ichiro Yamada, a twenty-five-year-old Japanese American, steps off a bus. He has just returned home from two years in an internment camp for Japanese Americans and two years in prison for refusing to join the U.S. armed forces. As he walks down the street, he does not feel at home. An old Japanese American friend named Eto greets him. Eto served in the U.S. Army, and he turns hostile when he learns that Ichiro is a "no-no" boy. He said no to serving in the U.S. armed forces and also refused to swear allegiance to the United States. Ichiro turns away and continues walking along the street until he reaches home, a cramped space behind a grocery store, where his mother, father, and younger brother Taro live. His father greets him warmly, and then his mother returns from the bakery.

Ichiro is bitter about his experience. He feels he made the wrong choice and should have fought for the United States, the land of his birth, and he blames his mother for his wrong choice. He is at odds with both his parents, who have lived in the United States for thirty-five years but speak only Japanese. He is especially resentful of his mother. She insists on believing that Japan won the war and that a ship will soon be sent to take them back to Japan. Ichiro thinks his mother is crazy. He feels he is neither Japanese nor American, and this distresses him. He blames himself as well as his mother. Taro resents him; he plans to go into the army instead of college. The two brothers are like strangers to each other.

That evening Ichiro and his mother visit another Japanese family, the Ashidas. Like Ichiro's mother, Mrs. Ashida believes that Japan won the war and a Japanese ship will take them back to Japan. Ichiro loathes her, and he persuades his mother that they should leave since it is getting late. They visit another Japanese family, the Kumasakas, who have purchased a home and seem reconciled to living in the United States. Ichiro inquires about their son Bob. He does not know that Bob was killed in the war, fighting in the U.S. Army. An army buddy of Bob's named Jun explains how Bob was killed in action.

As they leave, Ichiro again reviews his reasons for not joining the army. He decides he was weak and unable to do what he should have done. Returning home at midnight, he finds his father, who has been drinking, still up. He says he has been celebrating Ichiro's return. Ichiro finds out that unlike his mother, his father does not believe that Japan won the war. He has letters from relatives in Japan begging for help, asking for money, clothing, and food.

Chapter 2

At breakfast the next morning, Mrs. Yamada tells Ichiro that in reality it is Bob's mother who is dead since she did not conduct herself like a Japanese, and since she is no longer Japanese, she is the equivalent of being dead. She insists that she and her husband remain Japanese and that Ichiro is Japanese, too. Angry, Ichiro calls her crazy, grips her wrists and starts to drag her across the room. When his father intervenes, Ichiro strikes him, knocking him against the wall. He immediately apologizes, and his father understands why Ichiro is so angry. He gives Ichiro money so he can visit his friend, Freddie. Freddie, who has been out of prison for five weeks and has developed a defiant attitude, is pleased to see him.

Chapter 3

Ichiro leaves Freddie and walks down the street, trying to determine his place in the United States, where he was born and educated. He hopes that over time there will be a place for him; he will buy a home and have a family. Remembering when he studied engineering at the university, he takes the bus to the campus, where he visits Baxter Brown, his former teacher. The professor encourages him to return to his studies, but Ichiro is disappointed with their superficial conversation. He stops to buy a hamburger and encounters his friend Kenji, who has lost a leg in the war. Ichiro tells him he does not plan to enroll at the university. They walk to Kenji's new Oldsmobile, which has been specially redesigned so he can drive it. It was given to him by the federal government, in addition to education and pension benefits, because of the injury he received in combat. However, Kenji's leg has gangrene and may still kill him. Nonetheless, Ichiro would willingly change places with him because at least Kenji has become fully American. Ichiro returns home where his father is trying to persuade Taro, whose eighteenth birthday it is, to finish high school before he joins the army. Taro and Ichiro exchange angry words, and Taro storms out of the house.

Chapter 4

That evening, Kenji and Ichiro go to a casino in the Chinatown area of the city and then to a drinking club. Kenji tells him not to keep blaming himself. As the club fills up, a Japanese man, Bull, greets Kenji warmly but insults Ichiro, since he knows Ichiro is a no-no boy. Other young Japanese laugh at him, and Ichiro notices Taro in the club, too. Angry, Ichiro drinks some more and then follows Taro outside, since Taro says he wants to talk to him. He walks into a trap. In an alley, two youths accost him and insult him for being Japanese. One of the youths kicks him, and he stumbles. Ichiro fights back but is thrown to the ground. Kenji intervenes and drives the two youths away. He and Ichiro drive off in Kenji's car. They stop at a small farmhouse just outside the city, where Kenji's Japanese friend Emi lives. She has been virtually deserted by her husband, Ralph, who is determined to remain with the U.S. Army in Germany. By his physical appearance, Ichiro reminds her of her husband, and that night they sleep together. The next morning she tries to encourage him to put all his bitterness behind him, identify with being an American, and take action to create a better future for himself.

Chapter 5

When Ichiro returns home, he has another harsh exchange with his mother who does not want him to see Kenji again. His father then reads her a letter from her sister in Japan, who writes of the hardship they are enduring and asks them to send food for the children. Mrs. Yamada does not believe the letter is from her sister, and she goes and sits silently in the bedroom. Ichiro thinks she may no longer be sure that Japan won the war. At lunch time she refuses to eat, and her husband worries about her.

Chapter 6

Kenji returns home, where he greets his father. Father and son, who respect and love each other, share a drink, but the father feels the pain of knowing his son may soon die. While Kenji naps, his father goes out and buys a chicken for roasting. Kenji's sister Hanako and his brother Tom arrives. It is a happy family, but they are all worried about Kenji. After dinner, Kenji's married sisters, Hisa and Toyo, arrive with their husbands and children. The family gathering is lively, but Kenji slips out at about ten, planning to drive overnight with Ichiro to the hospital in Portland, Oregon. As they drive to Portland, they are stopped for speeding, but Kenji throws the ticket away. He believes that he does not have long to live.

Chapter 7

After saying goodbye to Kenji, Ichiro takes a hotel room and searches for a job. He is interviewed for a position as draftsman in a small engineering office. The pleasant owner of the company, Mr. Carrick, has a favorable view of the Japanese, and he offers Ichiro the job on the spot. The pay is good, but Ichiro cannot bring himself to accept it straightaway. He explains that he was in jail for refusing the draft. Mr. Carrick reacts sympathetically, but Ichiro has already decided that the job should go to someone who is fully American. He returns to the hotel to sleep but wakes in the middle of the night and goes to a café, where he rebuffs the attempts of the waiter, a Japanese American who is a U.S. Army veteran, to befriend him. In the morning, he drives to the hospital to visit Kenji, who tells him that he is dying. Kenji tells Ichiro to go back to Seattle and stay there until people learn to leave him alone. Ichiro returns to Seattle immediately and visits Emi, who tells him that her Japanese neighbor would offer him work, but Ichiro is not interested. There is an attraction between Emi and Ichiro, but Ichiro will not act on it because he believes Emi's husband will soon return from Germany.

Chapter 8

Ichiro's mother has not eaten for two days and is behaving strangely. Her husband is worried about her but can do nothing to help. She goes to the bathroom and runs the water for a bath, while Mr. Yamada drinks whisky and recalls the happy early days of their courtship. At nine o'clock in the evening, Ichiro drives to Kenji's home, where Kenji's father informs him that Kenji died at three o'clock that afternoon. After they grieve together for a while, Ichiro returns home to find his mother has drowned in the tub. He rouses his father, who has fallen into a drunken sleep, and informs him of his mother's suicide.

Chapter 9

The Buddhist funeral is held several days later. Friends and relatives gather, and Mr. Yamada even seems to be enjoying the situation. Ichiro feels awkward; the ceremony means little to him, and he is embarrassed by the speeches made in praise of his mother. Leaving before the funeral is over, he meets up with Freddie, who is living recklessly so that he never has to think much about his own unhappiness. Freddie tells him that he would be able to get a job at the Christian Reclamation Center, a charitable community. Ichiro goes home and receives a visit from Emi, who has heard about the deaths of Kenji and Ichiro's mother. She says she is divorcing her husband at his request. They go out dancing together, and a man they do not know buys them a drink. When Ichiro returns home early in the morning, he finds his father preparing a parcel to send to Japan. He seems relieved that his wife is no longer alive to dictate to him what he should do.

Chapter 10

Ichiro goes to the Christian Reclamation Center, where the man in charge, Mr. Morrison, offers him a job even though Ichiro confesses that he evaded the draft. Ichiro says he will think about it and talks to Gary, a friend of his who works there and who also refused the draft. Gary enjoys his work and feels that his life is on the right track. After Ichiro says he is going to turn the job down, Gary tells him about the prejudice he faced in his previous job at a foundry. Ichiro takes the bus home, thinking about his situation and seeing a ray of hope because of the goodness he has encountered in some people.

Chapter 11

Freddie and Ichiro go to the shoe shine parlor and then to a pool hall, where Freddie causes trouble and they have to leave. After this, Ichiro suggests they go back to his house, but Freddie wants to go to the Club Oriental, even though he knows there are people there who are out to get him. At the club, Bull picks a fight with Freddie and drags him outside. Ichiro intervenes and bloodies Bull's nose. Freddie digs his heel into Bull's stomach. Freddie then runs to his car and drives away recklessly. He hits another car, goes into the wall of a building, and is killed. Ichiro apologizes to Bull, who is howling and crying. Ichiro walks away feeling hopeful about the future.

Characters

Freddie Akimoto

Freddie Akimoto is a Japanese American friend of Ichiro. Like Ichiro, Freddie has just returned to Seattle, although whether he was in an internment camp or a prison is not stated. Freddie now has a defiant attitude. He lives recklessly, filling his time with activities such as drinking, fighting, womanizing, playing poker, and going to the movies. He lives this way to distract himself from his own unhappiness. Ichiro thinks Freddie is just running away from reality, but Freddie thinks Ichiro is stuck in a rut. Freddie is killed after he gets involved in a fight at the Club Oriental and drives off recklessly.

Mrs. Ashida

Mrs. Ashida and her husband come from the same village in Japan as the Yamadas. The two families are friends. Agreeing with Mrs. Yamada's sympathies, Mrs. Ashida's loyalties are to Japan. Mrs. Ashida believes that Japan won the war.

Birdie

Birdie is a black man who defends Gary at the foundry when the other workers are hostile to him.

Professor Baxter Brown

Baxter Brown is a professor of engineering at the university and Ichiro's former teacher. He encourages Ichiro to resume his studies.

Bull

Bull is a loud and rough Japanese American who is friendly to Kenji but not to Ichiro or Freddie. He and Freddie twice get into a fight at the Club Oriental.

Mr. Carrick

Mr. Carrick is the owner of the small engineering business to which Ichiro applies for a job. He is a decent man who likes Japanese people. He tells Ichiro that the internment of Japanese during the war was a big mistake and a black mark in the annals of U.S. history. When Ichiro confesses that he refused the draft, Mr. Carrick is sympathetic and tells Ichiro not to blame himself. Mr. Carrick's kindness and generosity help to give Ichiro hope that he may have a future in the United States.

Emi

Emi is an attractive, twenty-seven-year-old Japanese American whose husband, Ralph, is stationed with the U.S. Army in Germany and shows no signs of wanting to return. Ichiro is introduced to Emi by Kenji. He and Emi sleep together, and Emi gives Ichiro sound and encouraging advice about how he can move forward in his life. When she hears that her husband wants a divorce, she again seeks out Ichiro's company, and they go dancing together. She is a positive influence on Ichiro.

Gary

Gary is a Japanese American friend of Ichiro. He works as a sign painter at the Christian Reclamation Center. He enjoys his work and wants to become an artist. Like Ichiro, he has served time in prison, but unlike his friend he regards it as the best thing that happened to him because it enabled him to sort out his goals. He realizes that he has wasted a lot of time but now he believes he is moving in a positive direction.

Hanako Kanno

Hanako Kanno, Kenji's sister, works as a bookkeeper in an office in Seattle.

Kenji Kanno

Kenji Kanno is a young Japanese American who volunteered to fight in World War II. He was wounded and lost most of his leg and was awarded the Silver Star. The U.S. government has rewarded his sacrifice by giving him a new car, specially designed so he can drive it, as well as education and pension benefits. However, Kenji's wound is gangrenous, and he knows he may die soon. But he faces his fate with courage. What most upsets him is not his own condition but the bigotry, meanness, and racial prejudice he observes in others, attitudes that are foreign to his own nature. Kenji is a friendly, well-adjusted man, generous and level-headed, who is liked and respected by everyone. He comes from a close-knit, affectionate family, and he tries to help others, including his friends Emi and Ichiro, who is in every way his opposite. Kenji dies in the hospital in Portland.

Mr. Kanno

Mr. Kanno is Kenji's father, a good-hearted man who is close to his son and allowed him to volunteer for service in the U.S. armed forces. Mr. Kanno originally came to the United States to get rich and then return to Japan, but he eventually got used to and appreciated the fact that he could create a life for himself and his family there. After his wife died, he was left to raise six small children, which he did with much struggle. Now the children are grown, and he is comfortably off, although he grieves about the wound his son suffered in the war.

Tom Kanno

Tom Kanno, Kenji's brother, works as a drafter at an aircraft plant and is a baseball fan.

Mr. Kumasaka

Mr. Kumasaka and his wife are friends of the Yamada family. Unlike the Ashidas, Mr. and Mrs. Kumasaka have bought a house and are reconciled to staying in the United States. Their son Bob was killed fighting for the United States in the war, and they are still grief-stricken.

Eto Minato

Eto Minato is an old acquaintance of Ichiro. When the two meet after the war, Eto, who has been in the U.S. Army, is friendly to Ichiro until he finds out that Ichiro did not serve. Then he insults him and spits on him. Freddie later says that Eto was only in the army six months and then wangled himself a medical discharge.

Mr. Morrison

Mr. Morrison is the good-natured employer at the Christian Reclamation Center. He enjoys working in a job that allows him to help people, and he offers Ichiro a job without hesitation.

Rabbit

Rabbit is a black man who works at the shoe shine parlor.

Ichiro Yamada

Ichiro Yamada is the twenty-five-year-old Japanese American "no-no" boy of the title. He was born in the United States to first-generation Japanese immigrants and had begun his education in engineering at the university in Seattle when the war interrupted his plans. He was interned by the U.S. government, and partly out of loyalty to his Japanese mother and partly because he lacked the courage to do what he felt was the right thing, he refused to serve in the U.S. Army. As a result, he served two years in prison.

When he returns to Seattle after the war, he is confused, not knowing his place in the United States. Facing hostility from Japanese Americans such as Eto and Bull, Ichiro is filled with self-hatred and blames himself for his predicament. He is at odds with his own family, especially his mother, whom he thinks is crazy, and he regards his father as a weak man for whom he has no respect. He does not mourn his mother's death. Ichiro is also at loggerheads with his younger brother, Taro.

Ichiro feels more American than Japanese, but he also feels that he does not belong to either country. His feelings of guilt and his apparent need to go on suffering for his mistake prevent him from accepting an excellent job offer in Portland, since he convinces himself that the job should go to someone who is fully American in a way he can never be.

For two weeks, Ichiro stumbles along, experiencing deep introspective moods in which he ponders how he got into this mess and whether he will ever have a decent life in the United States. He is fortunate in that he encounters a number of people who are kind to him and give him helpful advice, such as Kenji and Emi, both of whom tell him not to blame himself. He also meets helpful, pro- Japanese employers who offer him a chance to get his life moving forward again. Finally, he begins to feel a glimmer of hope that he can one day become fully a part of the diverse community that populates the United States.

Mr. Yamada

Mr. Yamada, Ichiro's father, is a weak man, dominated by his strong-willed wife. Unlike her, he does not believe that Japan won the war, but he exerts little effort to tell her the truth. He regards her as a sick woman and worries about her, feeling that perhaps he is in some way partly responsible for her sickness. Mr. Yamada is a well-meaning man who tries to befriend his son, but Ichiro's opinion of him is scathing: "Pa's okay, but he's a nobody. He's a [g— d——], fat, grinning, spineless nobody." Mr. Yamada's main weakness is alcohol. On the night his wife commits suicide, he slowly drinks himself into a stupor. After her death and at the funeral, he seems more relieved than in mourning.

Mrs. Yamada

Mrs. Yamada, Ichiro's fanatical mother, rigidly maintains her allegiance to Japan and insists on believing that Japan won the war. She despises the United States even though she has lived there for thirty-five years. She refuses to learn or speak English and refers to Japanese Americans who serve in the U.S. armed forces and Japanese people who do not conduct themselves as Japanese as already dead. Mrs. Yamada entirely dominates her husband, who is too weak to stand up to her, and her relationship with Ichiro is full of tension. He rejects her completely, regarding her as insane. Eventually, when she receives a letter from her sister in Japan, it becomes impossible for her to believe any longer that Japan won the war. But she will not admit that openly. Instead, she retreats to her bedroom, refuses to eat, and exhibits signs of extreme psychological disturbance, such as lining cans up on the shelves and then hurling them to the floor, repacking them in boxes and then going through the whole procedure again. Eventually she commits suicide by drowning herself in the bathtub.

Taro Yamada

Taro Yamada, Ichiro's younger brother, is just eighteen. He is restless and refuses to study. He is determined to defy his parents' wishes and join the U.S. Army rather than go to college. He dislikes his brother because of Ichiro's refusal to serve in the armed forces, and he even leads Ichiro into a trap outside the Club Oriental, where two thugs try to beat him up.

Themes

Generational Conflict

The novel presents a type of generational conflict that is peculiar to immigrant families. The older, first generation parents identify with their country of origin, whereas the younger generation born in the new country identifies with it rather than the ancestral home. So it is with Ichiro Yamada, but in this case the generational conflict is sharpened by the facts of war.

When Ichiro is asked the two questions in the internment camp, he does not have the courage, maturity, or self-knowledge to answer what he truly feels in his heart. His real allegiance lies with the United States, but he holds back from stating it because he cannot free himself from the powerful influence of his mother, who will not allow him to develop an identity separate from hers. Her love is conditional. She says she is proud to call him her son, but he knows this is only because of his refusal to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Had he made a different decision, she would have rejected him. For her, there can be no compromise. She is incapable of seeing a situation from any point of view other than her own. She may think that she loves her son, but she is in effect smothering him, trying to make him deny who he really is. In return, all Ichiro can offer her is hostility, bitterness, and rage. His mother now is as much of a stranger to him as Japan, her country of origin that he has never seen. They literally speak different languages. The conflict can only be resolved by his mother's death, and Ichiro feels no grief at her passing.

Ichiro has no respect for his father either and regards him as weak. But his father is not as fanatical as his mother and is prepared to allow Ichiro, and also Ichiro's younger brother Taro, to go their own ways. His reasonableness in this respect allows him to maintain at least a semblance of a relationship with his son, and after the death of his wife, there is a hint that Ichiro and his father may develop a more genuine bond of sympathy.

The familial conflicts which afflict Ichiro are sharply contrasted with the bonds of love and affection that bind Kenji and his family together. Kenji's father accepted Kenji's decision to join the army, although it was not what he would have wished. But his flexibility and wisdom allow their family to remain united, without rancor, in contrast to the bitter divisions that tear the Yamada family apart.

Assimilation and Overcoming Self-blame

Despite his Japanese heritage, Ichiro knows in his heart that he is American. He knows also that when he answered no to the two questions in the internment camp he was not being true to who he really is. He makes his feelings plain early in the novel, when he first returns home:

[O]ne is not born in America and raised in America and taught in America and one does not speak and swear and drink and smoke and play and fight and see and hear in America among Americans in American streets and houses without becoming American and loving it.

His task now is to integrate American mainstream life. But he faces a double barrier. Not only does he have to convince white Americans that he is a true American, he also faces hostility from other Japanese Americans who despise him for being a "no-no" boy. During the two weeks in which the novel takes place, Ichiro embarks on an inner journey in which he must convince himself that a life in the United States, as an American, is possible for him. Having once turned his back on himself and the country that he knows is his, he must learn to face them both again. He must overcome his tendency to blame himself for his predicament and also his own feeling that he, having once rejected the United States, is now forever unacceptable to it. Time and again, he encounters people, especially the employers Mr. Carrick and Mr. Morrison, as well as Kenji and Emi, who show him that the United States is in fact a land of generosity, compassion, and inclusiveness. These people are far less concerned about the choice Ichiro made in the internment camp than he is himself. His actions then do not matter to them, and they show him only kindness and affection. By the end of the novel, Ichiro has made progress toward the realization that his troubles are of his own making. He is ready to make a free choice to accept his rightful place, knowing that the United States is a vast community in which injustice and hatred certainly exist, but which also offers the possibility of forgiveness and a new start for those who have lost their way.

Topics For Further Study

Conduct some interviews with some first- and second-generation immigrants from any country, either from your school or the local community, and make a class presentation on the different attitudes each generation has to its country of origin and to the United States. How do the second-generation immigrants, born as U.S. citizens, regard the United States? Do they make efforts to learn about the culture of their parents?
Asian immigrants are sometimes known as the model minority. Research this expression. What does it mean and why are Asians thought to embody it? Is the term accurate? Do Asian immigrants succeed more consistently than, say, Hispanic immigrants? If so, why should this be? Write an essay in which you describe your research and present some conclusions.
Write an essay in which you examine how the Kanno family is presented in chapter 6 of the novel. How does Mr. Kanno's life embody the American dream? How does his family reflect the ideal of Japanese immigrant assimilation of mainstream American culture?
Write a letter to the editor of a newspaper, warning readers of the dangers, in the current U.S. war on terror, of treating Arab Americans or Muslim Americans any differently from any other group of American citizens. As a main part of your letter, use the example of the unjustified internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s. Include pertinent facts and relate them to the present situation in the United States.

Style

Setting

The novel gives a realistic picture of the Japanese immigrant area of Seattle, which includes Jackson Street, where Ichiro and his family live, and extends from Fifth to Twelfth Avenue. Known as "Japanese town," it is adjacent to another immigrant area known as Chinatown. Both areas are known for the prevalence of gambling, prostitution, and drinking. They are also impoverished and have gotten worse in the four years Ichiro has been away: "Everything looked older and dirtier and shabbier." In Chinatown, the brick buildings are "more black than red with age and neglect." The young people in these areas spend their time aimlessly in the pool halls, the cafés, and the taverns, although they seem not to lack ready cash to enjoy themselves in the evenings.

The home of Ichiro's parents, behind the grocery store they own, is "a hole in the wall with groceries crammed in orderly confusion on not enough shelving, into not enough space." The cramped, inadequate quarters reflect the difficult lives of first-generation immigrants who have had to struggle and make do with little as they tried to establish themselves in a new country. The Ashidas, friends of the Yamadas, also live in less than ideal circumstances. They have only four rooms, on the second floor of a three-story house, in which two adults and three children live together. In a telling detail, the living room is described as "sparsely furnished." The Kumasakas, by contrast, live in more prosperous circumstances, in a "freshly painted frame house" with a "neatly kept lawn." The details are significant because this family has shown more willingness to assimilate American culture. They have decided to stay in the country permanently, and their son fought and died for the United States in the war. As a result of this assimilation, their home "is like millions of other homes in America."

Historical Context

Internment of Japanese Americans

After the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. government considered that Japanese Americans were a threat to national security because they might support Japan rather than the United States. Much of this suspicion was fueled by racism, the belief that Japanese immigrants were somehow different and could never be fully American. The American fear of Japanese immigrants was evident historically in a law passed in 1924 that prohibited intermarriage between Japanese men and white women. There was also a prohibition on Japanese immigrants sponsoring wives from Japan.

Convinced by his advisors that Japanese Americans were being recruited as spies, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. The order revoked the civil rights of Japanese Americans, despite the fact that two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens. About 112,000 Japanese Americans from all over the Pacific coast were rounded up and sent to internment camps in nine states. Most of the camps were built on Native American reservations.

The internment was a devastating experience for the Japanese, since they were forced to quickly abandon their homes and businesses. It also damaged their culture. The Japanese are a self-reliant people, but in the camps they were forced to depend on the U.S. government to meet their basic needs. The internment was especially hard on the Issei, the first generation immigrants, many of whom, like the Yamada family in No-No Boy, had been living in the United States for thirty or forty years. They lost everything they had worked for.

In January 1943, the U.S. government decided to recruit second-generation Japanese immigrants into an all-Japanese combat unit. All males in the internment camps were required to answer a series of questions, which included whether they were willing to serve in the U.S. armed forces and whether they would swear allegiance to the United States, defend the country against any attack, and renounce obedience to the Japanese emperor. Most of the internees answered yes to these questions, giving the lie to the idea that all Japanese immigrants were threats to national security. However, several hundred, including Ichiro in No-No Boy, did not, and they were sent to prison for disloyalty.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the Executive Order 9066, but the U.S. government finally rescinded it on January 2, 1945. All Japanese American prisoners were released from the internment camps. In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed a law that provided for payment of twenty thousand dollars each to the surviving Japanese-American victims of internment.

Japanese American Literature in the 1950s

In the 1950s, the United States was generally unwilling to face up to what had happened to Japanese Americans during World War II. It was considered more important to present a picture of the United States in which nonwhite immigrants were able to integrate into the mainstream culture. This was during the cold war between the West and the Soviet Union, and the cultivation of an optimistic image of the United States was considered necessary in countering Soviet charges of U.S. economic and racial inequalities. The U.S. postwar alliance with Japan was also a factor. Given this political and cultural environment, the type of Japanese American literature favored by mainstream publishers was mostly innocuous autobiographical accounts of immigrants who told of their struggle as newcomers to establish themselves in U.S. society and the success and assimilation of their children. Monica Sone's autobiographical Nisei Daughter (1953), which was a commercial success, told of her experience during internment, but she was careful to present an image of Japanese Americans that she believed would be acceptable to white Americans. She made it clear, for example, that she regarded the United States rather than Japan as her home and that Japanese immigrants were fully capable of assimilating American life. More challenging accounts of race relations in the United States were left to African American authors, with the publication, for example, of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952). It was for these reasons that it took two decades before No-No Boy, a more controversial, hard-hitting account of the Japanese American experience than Nisei Daughter, won a wide readership.

Compare & Contrast

1940s: In 1945, the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat team is awarded 18,143 Medals of Valor and 9,486 Purple Hearts, making it the highest decorated military unit in U.S. history.
Today: Americans of Japanese descent make their mark in many fields of activity. In 1999, General Eric Shinseki becomes the thirty-fourth chief of staff, United States Army, and serves in that position until his retirement in 2003.
1940s: In 1945, defeated Japan is forced to accept U.S. occupation. Those Japanese considered war criminals are tried and hanged. Japan is given a constitution and the work of reconstruction begins. Japan no longer possesses a Pacific empire.
Today: Japan is a staunch U.S. ally and a major economic power in Asia and globally.
1940s: After release from internment, many Japanese Americans move to parts of the country other than the West and Northwest Coast in order to restart their lives.
Today: The number of Japanese Americans in the United States is approximately 1,148,000. The largest communities remain in California and Washington, but there are also sizable Japanese American communities in New York, Texas, Illinois, Oregon, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Florida. Each year, about seven thousand Japanese immigrants enter the United States.

Critical Overview

When No-No Boy was published by mainstream publisher Charles E. Tuttle in 1957, it was largely ignored by both the literary establishment and the Japanese American community. The latter had yet to come to grips with the Japanese American experience of internment during World War II and the controversial issues of racial and national identity that are at the core of the novel. At the time of Okada's death, fourteen years later, some of the fifteen hundred copies printed remained unsold.

However, in the 1970s, the novel was rediscovered by a group of Asian American writers, including Jeffrey Paul Chan, Frank Chin, David Ishii, and Lawson Fusao Inada. They realized that No-No Boy was an important milestone in Asian American literature, as well as a powerful novel in its own right. Thanks to the work of the Combined Asian American Research Project, No-No Boy was reprinted in 1976 and quickly acquired wide readership and critical acclaim. Inada, writing in 1976, calls No-No Boy "a great and lasting work of art. It is a living force among us. And it is just one of the many beautiful and courageous stories of the continuing story of what we know as Asian-America." Over the following thirty years, the novel continued to attract the attention of scholars. In "To Belong or Not to Belong: The Liminality of John Okada's No-No Boy," William Yeh comments on the "enduring relevance of Okada's work, an honest and uncompromising, occasionally didactic and melodramatic, examination of the aftereffects of the World War II draft resistance by Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans)." Yeh analyzes both the novel itself and the reception it received in terms of "liminality, or ‘betweenness,’" in the sense of standing not fully in either American or Japanese culture. The relationship between Ichiro and his mother has attracted interest from psychoanalytic critics. Bryn Gribben, in "The Mother That Won't Reflect Back: Situating Psychoanalysis and the Japanese Mother in No-No Boy," points out that many of the elements in No-No Boy can be explained in terms of psychoanalysis:

the controlling mother, her refusal to look into a mirror with her son and face their separateness, and her death by water all signify, in traditional Western psychoanalysis, a psychosexually rooted crisis in masculine identity formation, based on separation and differentiation from the mother.

Okada's work is well received at long last though regrettably years after his death.

Criticism

Bryan Aubrey

Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth century literature. In this essay, he discusses Ichiro Yamada's search for psychic wholeness and his lost sense of belonging.

At the beginning of No-No Boy, Ichiro Yamada is in the midst of an identity crisis as he tries to put his life back together following his release from two years in prison. The unity of his family has been shattered irreparably, and he does not know where he belongs, feeling that he was "born not soon enough or not late enough" and is therefore "neither Japanese nor American." Using a structural rhythm that alternates between Ichiro's encounters with various Japanese Americans and white Americans and his intense reflections about his own situation, the novel tells the story of his search for psychic wholeness and his lost sense of belonging.

There are lessons for Ichiro everywhere he goes and from everyone he meets. Not all of these experiences are helpful to him, however, especially at the beginning of the novel, when everything that happens seems to fuel his self-doubt and his fear that he has forever lost his chance to be fully accepted as an American. It is easy to understand his predicament. Along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, the U.S. government put him in a camp, as he tells Mr. Carrick, "to prove to us that we weren't American enough to be trusted" and then imprisoned him for refusing to swear allegiance to the nation of his birth, so he has every reason to fear white America will never accept him, whatever he does to redeem himself. "Being American is a terribly incomplete thing if one's face is not white and one's parents are Japanese of the country Japan which attacked America," he says. He is unfortunate in that so soon after his return to Seattle he encounters second-generation Japanese Americans such as Eto and Bull, who identify strongly with being American and have no time for a man who in their eyes chose to ally himself with the enemy.

But it is interesting to note that these men are, like Ichiro, Japanese Americans. The hostility Ichiro anticipates from white Americans simply never materializes. There is a large discrepancy between what he expects to find, given his own fear and self-hatred, and what he does find, although it is a long time before he is able to fully recognize this. In his heart he knows all along that his future has not been destroyed and that the United States, even for him, is still a land of opportunity. This can be seen by his thoughts when he walks down the street after his first meeting with Freddie Akimoto, another "no-no" boy, who acts as a foil for Ichiro. Ichiro tells himself that there surely must be the hope of redemption. He remains a U.S. citizen; he is permitted to vote, and he is free to travel and study and marry. Over time, he says, there will be forgiveness in the country that is known for its "vastness and goodness and fairness and plentitude," and he will buy a home, start a family, and be as American as everyone else. But as soon as he conceives this vision, he denies it. "Swallowed up by the darkness of his soul," he cannot overcome his negative frame of mind. Even then, however, he knows that "the trouble [is] inside of him"; the enemy he faces is more internal than external. It is he, no one else, who finds himself "guilty of treason."

These points are clearly demonstrated in Ichiro's three encounters with white Americans. The first is with Baxter Brown, his former engineering professor at the university. Brown makes it clear from the outset that he is sympathetic to Japanese Americans and is aware of the injustice of the internment: "Families uprooted, businesses smashed, educations disrupted. You've got a right to be sore." Brown makes the assumption that Ichiro had been helping the U.S. war effort in some capacity, and Ichiro is too unsure of himself to reveal the truth, but Ichiro hardly has cause to complain about being excluded from his former place of study, since Brown urges him to return. White America is prepared to open its doors to him.

The same point is made when Ichiro goes for a job interview at Carrick and Sons in Portland. Mr. Carrick could not be more welcoming. He greets Ichiro with a phrase in Japanese and says he has had some good Japanese friends. Like Brown, he expresses regret about the internment and even goes so far as to apologize for it as "a big black mark in the annals of American history." He also offers Ichiro the job on the spot. When Ichiro confesses he refused the draft, Mr. Carrick shows great sympathy and understanding. He does not judge Ichiro. Later, Ichiro realizes that Mr. Carrick, and others like him, "offered a way back into the great compassionate stream of life that is America," and this marks an important milestone in Ichiro's journey toward recovering his sense of belonging.

The third white American Ichiro meets is Mr. Morrison, who speaks to him in exactly the same, kind, tolerant, open-minded, and generous way that Mr. Carrick does. Like Mr. Carrick, he greets Ichiro with a few words of Japanese and says he admires the Japanese people. He understands Ichiro's problem as a "no-no" boy immediately, even without Ichiro telling him, since his employee Gary has exactly the same problem. Like Mr. Carrick, Mr. Morrison offers Ichiro a job immediately.

The reader may feel that the close similarities between these two characters and how they interact with Ichiro, coming so close together in the narrative, detract from the literary merits of the novel. It seems that Okada the author may have been, at least in this instance, more concerned with making a didactic point than in creating realistic characters. His treatment of Mr. Carrick and Mr. Morrison seems to reflect the predominant belief in the 1950s, that white America was now successfully extending the hand of friendship to the Japanese Americans whom it had once regarded as a subversive influence.

Certainly, Ichiro's external problems, as opposed to his internal doubts, lie not with white America but with the Japanese American community, which is divided not only between the Issei (first-generation immigrants, born in Japan) and the Nisei (second-generation, American born), but also between the Nisei themselves. Those who fought in the war, the novel implies, have something to prove—that they are fully American—and tend to become aggressive super-patriots, intolerant of those who cling to their Japanese heritage. Ichiro, for example, fears that his brother, Taro, who is about to enter the army, will end up like these arrogant Nisei, "walk[ing] the streets of America as if you owned them always and forever."

But Ichiro is fortunate in that not all the Nisei are like Eto, or Bull, or those who tormented Gary, the third "no-no" boy in the novel, when he worked at the foundry. Ichiro also has Kenji and Emi to show him a better path, as well as Freddie to show him the way not to live.

What Do I Read Next?

Joy Kogawa's Obasan (1981), which has won many awards, examines the effects of internment and forced relocation on Japanese Canadians. The focus is on the Nakane family, and the story is told from the perspective of Naomi, an unmarried schoolteacher. The book is relevant for American readers since the policy of the Canadian government on its Japanese citizens was similar to that of the United States.
Louis Chu's Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961) is set in New York's Chinatown after World War II. One of the first Chinese American novels, it has won praise for its language, which expresses idiomatic Cantonese in English. The themes of the novel include generational conflict and the disillusionment of Chinese immigrants with the American dream.
Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories (revised edition with four new stories, 2001), by Hisaye Yamamoto, a second-generation Japanese American immigrant, covers the whole range of Japanese American experience, including the internment camps and the tensions between first-generation and second-generation immigrants. Yamamoto's stories also place particular emphasis on the lives of women.
Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (1993), by Roger Daniels, is a concise introduction by one of the foremost historians of Japanese American history to the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Topics discussed include the historical prejudice against Asian Americans, the upholding by the Supreme Court of the evacuation, life in the relocation centers, and the difficulty of resettling people after the war was over.

In Kenji, Ichiro finds true friendship. A Nisei who fought and was wounded in the war, Kenji declines to reproach Ichiro for his refusal to serve. He does not feel even a twinge of anger or resentment about the matter. He also manages to give Ichiro some good advice. As he lies dying in his hospital bed, he warns about how the Japanese in Seattle are putting up psychological fences around themselves, cutting themselves off in their own little enclave: "They [b——] and hollered when the government put them in camps and put real fences around them, but now they're doing the same damn thing to themselves." He feels strongly that ethnic differences should be transcended; he sees people as people, not as members of a particular group that differentiates them from another group. He tells Ichiro to return to Seattle where things will work out well for him in the long run. "The kind of trouble you've got, you can't run from it," he tells his friend.

Running from his troubles is the mistake made by Ichiro's other friend, Freddie, who cultivates a defiant, me-against-the-world attitude that merely compounds the problem. Ichiro realizes that Freddie has "blindly sought relief in total, hateful rejection of self and family and society," and Ichiro eventually comes to the understanding that such a path leads nowhere. Unlike Freddie, Ichiro is able to reflect honestly on his experiences and face his fears. At the end of the novel, Freddie's sudden and violent death symbolizes the fact that his way was untenable in the long term. Instead, it is Ichiro who finds the ray of hope he so desperately needs.

In this rediscovery of hope he has much to thank Emi for. She is a sweet, practical, down-to-earth woman who does not let her own sorrows—the desertion by her husband, Ralph—make her bitter. She reminds Ichiro of the greatness of the country of which he is a citizen ("This is a big country with a big heart. There's room for all kinds of people") and also helps him to get beyond his constant negative self-talk. A key incident occurs in chapter 9, when Ichiro takes Emi to a dance, where a man they do not know insists on buying them both a drink. Ichiro is suspicious. He offers Emi a variety of explanations involving ulterior motives on the part of the man, who appears not to be Japanese, until Emi coaxes out of him the comment, "I want to think … that he saw a young couple and liked their looks and felt he wanted to buy them a drink and did." Emi confirms for him, "You keep on thinking that. That's how it was." Emi is quietly encouraging Ichiro not to read into situations things that are not there but to have a simple, more accepting attitude. Up to this point, Ichiro has made up a story for himself about his own life and his place (or lack of it) in the United States, but the story is neither helpful to him nor true. In silencing the negative, fear-based workings of his mind, which only impose a veil over what is really happening, he gives himself a better chance of finding that "elusive insinuation of promise" that will enable him to make his way once more in the land of his birth.

Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on No-No Boy, in Novels for Students, Thomson Gale, 2007.

Elaine H. Kim

In the following excerpt, Kim recounts Okada's depiction of the splintering effects of internment on Japanese American families and communities.

Text Not Available Due to Permissions

Source: Elaine H. Kim, "Japanese American Portraits," in Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context, Temple University Press, 1982, pp. 148-56.

Sources

Gribben, Bryn, "The Mother That Won't Reflect Back: Situating Psychoanalysis and the Japanese Mother in No-No Boy," in MELUS, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 2003, p. 31.

Inada, Lawson Fusao, "Introduction," in John Okada, No-No Boy, University of Washington Press, 1979, p. vi.

Okada, John, No-No Boy, University of Washington Press, 1979.

Yeh, William, "To Belong or Not to Belong: The Liminality of John Okada's No-No Boy," in Amerasia Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1993, p. 121.