John Okada > Quotes

“There is a period between each night and day when one dies for a few hours, neither dreaming nor thinking nor tossing nor hating nor loving, but dying for a little while because life progresses in just such a way.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“...Love is not something you save and hoard. You're born with it and you spend it when you have to and there's always more because you're a woman and there's always suffering and pain and gentleness and sadness to make it grow.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“This is the way it ought to be, he thought to himself, to be able to dance with a girl you like and really get a kick out of it because everything’ on an even keel and one’s worries are of the usual ones of unpaid bills and sickness in the family and being late to work too often. Wh can’t it be that way for me? Nobody’s looking twice at us. Nobody’s asking me where I was during the war or what the hell I am doing back on the coast. There’s no trouble to be had without looking for it. Everything’s the same, just as it used to be. No bad feelings except for those that have always been and probably always will. It’s a matter of attitude. Mine needs changing. I’ve got to love the world the way I used to. I’ve got to love it and the people so I’ll feel good, and feeling good will make life worthwhile. There’s no point in crying about what’s done. There’s a place for me and Emi and Freddie here on the dance floor and out there in the hustle of things if we’ll let it be that way. I’ve been fighting it and hating it and letting my bitterness against myself and Ma and Pa and even Taro throw the whole universe out of perspective. I want only to go on living and be happy. I’ve only to let myself do so.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“only in fiction can the hopes and fears and joys and sorrows of people be adequately recorded.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“Dead. He thought to himself, all dead. For me, you have been dead a long time, as long as I can remember. You, who gave a life to me and to Taro and tried to make us conform to a mold which never existed for us because we never knew of it, were never alive to us in the way that other sons and daughters know and feel and see their parents. But you made so many mistakes. It was a mistake to have ever left Japan. It was a mistake to leave Japan and to come to America and to have two sons and it was a mistake to think that you could keep us completely Japanese in a country such as America. With me, you almost succeeded, or so it seemed. Sometimes I think it would have been better had you fully succeeded. You would have been happy and so might I have known a sense of completeness. But the mistakes you made were numerous enough and big enough so that they, in turn, made inevitable my mistake. I have had much time to feel sorry for myself. Suddenly I feel sorry for you. Not sorry that you are dead, but sorry for the happiness you have not known. So, now you are free. Go back quickly. Go to the Japan that you so long remembered and loved, and be happy.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“What had happened to him and the others who faced a judged and said: "You can't make me go in the army because I'm not American, or you wouldn't have plucked me and mine from a life that was good and real and meaningful and fenced me in the desert like they do the Jews in Germany and it is a puzzle why you haven't started to liquidate us though you might as well since everything else has been destroyed."
And some said: "You, Mr. Judge, who supposedly represent justice, was it just a thing to ruin a hundred thousand lives and homes and farms and businesses and dreams and hopes because the hundred thousand were a hundred thousand Japanese when Japan is the country you're fighting and, if so, how about the Germans and Italians that must be just as questionable as the Japanese or we wouldn't be fighting Germany and Italy? Round them up. Take away their homes and cars and beer and spaguetti and throw them in a camp, and what do you think they'll say when you try to draft them into your army of the country that is for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“Time would ease the rupture which now
separated him from the young Japanese who were Americans because they had
fought for America and believed in it. And time would destroy the old Japanese
who, living in America and being denied a place as citizens, nevertheless had
become inextricably a part of the country which by its vastness and goodness
and fairness and plenitude drew them into its fold, or else they would not have
understood why it was that their sons, who looked as Japanese as they
themselves, were not Japanese at all but Americans of the country America.”
― john okada

“And when one is feeling gay and full of joy, the saké must be brought out to lift the spirits higher. And they drank, your papa and mine and the mayor's brother, and I only a little because I was even happier than they and needed no false joy.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“Filthy-minded old bastard,' he muttered viciously under his breath. No wonder the world such a rotten place, rotten and filthy and cheap and smelly. Where is that place they talk of and paint nice pictures of and described in all the homey magazines? Where is that place with the clean, white cottages surrounding the new, red brick church with the clean, white steeple, were the families all have two children, one boy and one girl, and a shiny new car in the garage and a dog and a cat and life is like living in the land of the happily-ever-after? Surely it must be around here someplace, someplace in America. Or is it just that it's not for me? Maybe I dealt myself out, but what about that young kid on Burnside who was in the army and found it wasn't enough so that he has to keep proving to everyone who comes in for a cup of coffee that he was fighting for his country like the button on his shirt says he did because the army didn't do anything about his face to make him look more American? And what about the poor niggers on Jackson Street who can't find anything better to do than spit on the sidewalk and show me the way to Tokyo? They're on the outside looking in, just like that kid and just like me and just like everybody else I’ve ever seen or known. Even Mr. Carrick. Why isn't he in? Why is he on the outside squandering his goodness on outcasts like me? Maybe the answer is that there is no in. Maybe the whole damn country is pushing and shoving and screaming to get into some place that doesn't exist, because they don't know that the outside could be the inside if only they would stop all this pushing and shoving and screaming, and they haven't got enough sense to realise that. That makes sense. I've got the answer all figured out, simple and neat, and sensible.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“No, he said to himself as he watched her part the curtains and start into the store. There was a time when I was your son, there was a time that I no longer remember when you used to smile a mother’s smile and tell me stories about gallant and fierce warriors who protected their lords with blades of shining steel, and about the old woman who found the peach in the stream and took it home, and when her husband split it in half, a husky little boy tumbled out to fill their hearts with boundless joy. I was that lad and the peach, and you were the old woman. And we were Japanese with Japanese feelings and Japanese pride, and Japanese thoughts, because it was alright then to be Japanese and feel and think all the things that Japanese do even if we lived in America. Then there came a time when I was only half Japanese, because one 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. But I did not love enough – for you were still half my mother, and that was thereby still half Japanese, and when the war came and they told me to fight for America I was not strong enough to fight you, and I was not strong enough to fight the bitterness which made the half me which was you bigger than the half me which was America. And really the whole of me that I could not see or feel - now that I know the truth when it is late - and the of half me which was you is no longer there. I am only half of me, and the half that remains is American by law because the government was wise and strong enough to know why it was that I could not fight for America, and did not strip me of my birthright. But it is not enough to be only half an American and know that it is an empty half. I am not your son. And I am not Japanese. And I am not American.”
― John Okada, No-no Boy

“joys and sorrows of people be adequately recorded.” I love this, and I agree with it completely. It points to the truth that the historical record is more than just facts. The dense emotional textures of a time, the layered, nuanced feelings of an age, these are the vital bits of information that drop quickly away. Only fiction has the power to ask the questions that bring the past to life and to record it in all its vibrant confusion and complexity. You have done that, John Okada. By filling in these gaps in the past,”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“His protestations went unheeded, for they were gathered to attend a funeral and one was expected to say the right things.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“Drink to whatever it is I'm headed, and don't let there be any Japs or Chinks or Jews or Poles or Niggers or Frenchies, but only people.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“There had been such a time and he vividly
brought to mind, with a hunger that he would never lose, the weighty volumes
which he had carried against his side so that the cloth of his pants became thin
and frayed, and the sandwiches in a brown grocery bag and the slide rule with
the leather case which hung from his belt like the sword of learning which it
was, for he was going to become an engineer and it had not mattered that Japan
would soon be at war with America. To be a student in America was a wonderful
thing. To be a student in America studying engineering was a beautiful life.”
― john okada, No-No Boy

“It was good, the years I rotted in prison. I got the lead out of my ass and the talk out of my system. I died in prison. And when I came back to life, all that really mattered for me was to make a painting. I came home and said hello to the family and tried to talk to them, but there was nothing to talk about. I didn't stay. I found a room, next to the sky, a big, draft attic atop a dilapidated mansion full of boarders who mind their own business. Old friends are now strangers. I've no one to talk to and no desire to talk, for I have nothing to say except what comes out of my paint tubes and brushes. During the day, I paint for my keep. At night, I paint for myself. The picture I want is inside of me. I'm groping for it and it gives me peace and satisfaction. For me, the cup is overflowing.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“Let 'em talk. They got nothin' else to live for.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“they don't know that the outside could be the inside if only they would stop all this pushing and shoving and screaming, and they haven't got enough sense to realize that.”
― John Okada, No-No Boy