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No-No Boy
"No-No Boy has the honor of being among the first of what has become an entire literary canon of Asian American literature,” writes novelist Ruth Ozeki in her new foreword. First published in 1957, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel’s importance and popularized it as one of literature’s most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience.
No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life “no-no boys.” Yamada answered “no” twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle. As Ozeki writes, Ichiro’s “obsessive, tormented” voice subverts Japanese postwar “model-minority” stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man’s “threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world.”
No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life “no-no boys.” Yamada answered “no” twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle. As Ozeki writes, Ichiro’s “obsessive, tormented” voice subverts Japanese postwar “model-minority” stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man’s “threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world.”
10 pages, Audiobook
First published January 1, 1956
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January 30, 2019
No-No Boy was searingly wrong for its time: in 1956 John Okada wrote a novel about a Japanese American man who went to prison instead of fighting for a country that had sent his family to an internment camp. It was a time when white readers weren't ready to read the truth, and when Japanese-Americans were trying to move on. This novel was just reprinted last year by U Washington Press, with a foreword by Ruth Ozeki--it's worth getting a copy of the new edition just to read her essay about Okada and about the immediate post-WWII realities of Japanese American life. As Ozeki writes in her foreword, Ichiro's "obsessive, tormented" voice subverts Japanese postwar "model-minority" stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man's "threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world."
I was expecting something polemical and discovered something far more subtle. The characters are complicated in interesting ways. I expected Ichiro, the titular No No Boy, to be righteous, a conscientious objector, to have a strong and (from my vantage point of 2015) completely defensible reason for refusing to swear loyalty to the United States or to enlist in the US armed forces when at the same time his people were being shipped off to internment camps.
Not at all. The novel is simply told, but never simple. Instead, the protagonist, Ichiro, is full of shame and self-doubt about his decision to refuse to swear a loyalty oath to the U.S. He wishes he could change his mind and take back the last two years, not because he spent them in prison, but because now he doesn't know who he is any longer. He envies friends who have come home wounded from the war; he even envies the war dead, even though their sacrifices have not given their families any more acceptance, and have not shielded them from race hatred at home.
Along with Ichiro, Okada introduces a host of other characters who each reflect a reasonable response to the prejudice and hardships faced by Japanese Americans in the 50's. One of my many favorites is Ichiro's mother, an unabashed Japanese nationalist, a woman who thinks any news about Japanese defeat must be U.S. war propaganda, and who rejects even the letters from her own family members in Japan as false.
Okada's writing has a hard-boiled feel that reminded me of From Here to Eternity by James Jones, which was published just a few years prior to No No Boy. The themes of the novel anticipate the turmoil of the Viet Nam war to follow, when men of a certain age found themselves divided into those who fought, and those who fought the draft. The novel should be read more widely not only as literature but as a fictional testament to the era in which it was written.
I was expecting something polemical and discovered something far more subtle. The characters are complicated in interesting ways. I expected Ichiro, the titular No No Boy, to be righteous, a conscientious objector, to have a strong and (from my vantage point of 2015) completely defensible reason for refusing to swear loyalty to the United States or to enlist in the US armed forces when at the same time his people were being shipped off to internment camps.
Not at all. The novel is simply told, but never simple. Instead, the protagonist, Ichiro, is full of shame and self-doubt about his decision to refuse to swear a loyalty oath to the U.S. He wishes he could change his mind and take back the last two years, not because he spent them in prison, but because now he doesn't know who he is any longer. He envies friends who have come home wounded from the war; he even envies the war dead, even though their sacrifices have not given their families any more acceptance, and have not shielded them from race hatred at home.
Along with Ichiro, Okada introduces a host of other characters who each reflect a reasonable response to the prejudice and hardships faced by Japanese Americans in the 50's. One of my many favorites is Ichiro's mother, an unabashed Japanese nationalist, a woman who thinks any news about Japanese defeat must be U.S. war propaganda, and who rejects even the letters from her own family members in Japan as false.
Okada's writing has a hard-boiled feel that reminded me of From Here to Eternity by James Jones, which was published just a few years prior to No No Boy. The themes of the novel anticipate the turmoil of the Viet Nam war to follow, when men of a certain age found themselves divided into those who fought, and those who fought the draft. The novel should be read more widely not only as literature but as a fictional testament to the era in which it was written.
May 17, 2023
I think this book is important for highlighting the racism Japanese Americans faced historically in the United States. One compelling theme is the push and pull between assimilating to mainstream American culture and resisting such pressures. I liked that John Okada was honest and angry in his writing about racism, especially given that the main character in this novel spent two years in a Japanese internment camp. I didn’t find the writing style of No-No Boy super engaging, though I appreciate the novel for its historical significance in regard to Japanese American/Asian American literature.
Also, note that there’s some fatphobia, glorification of whiteness (e.g., saying that an Asian woman’s legs were “strong and shapely like a white woman’s,” which, yikes), and anti-Blackness (e.g., use of the n word) in this novel. These issues didn’t heavily influence my rating, though I feel like it’s important to name these things even if people might feel like they’re a product of the time in which this novel was written.
Also, note that there’s some fatphobia, glorification of whiteness (e.g., saying that an Asian woman’s legs were “strong and shapely like a white woman’s,” which, yikes), and anti-Blackness (e.g., use of the n word) in this novel. These issues didn’t heavily influence my rating, though I feel like it’s important to name these things even if people might feel like they’re a product of the time in which this novel was written.
July 18, 2021
Library ebook….
Ruth Ozeki wrote the introduction.
What she wrote was interesting and painful.
I felt regret along with Ruth about how sad it was that this important book was toss-a-way for years.
The introduction was a powerful touching tribute to John Okada - [deceased] - who never got to see his forgotten book come to life.
The story is about a young Japanese man during WWII whose family was sent to the an internment camp…. and about his own return to Seattle.
There was a lot of controversy when this book was first published between the Japanese community.
In 1957, it seemed as though people were not ready to hear the truth of how much Japanese Americans struggled being in the United States.
John Okada died in 1971 … totally unaware that his book was re-discovered…
His voice was starting to finally be heard.
The horrors, shame, complexities, psychological anguish, racism - social injustices - the aftermath — being back from ‘the camps’…..
Japanese American immigrants were trying to move on…find their place in the world.
“No No Boy” reveals the tragedy- the struggles- post WWII complexities within the Japanese community of Seattle.
Many Japanese American citizens rebelled and refused to serve their county.
They felt they had made enough sacrifices from the past unfair treatments.
This was not my first time reading about our government sending Japanese Americans to internment camps —who were innocent American citizens.
It was tragic and wrong.
The author -John Okada wasn’t shy in writing about his resentment and anger.
His immigrant characters- parents and children- conflicted veterans- and no-no boys, were trying to heal -move on.
Too many people were completely mistreated.
What makes this book extraordinary is that it was written at a time nobody talked about the Japanese American painful struggles and how deeply it affected them.
With the recent Anti-Asian hate in the U.S. - this shameful period of history is certainly relevant today….
with many Japanese Americans still trying to reconcile their heritage, heal, be accepted and respected.
Ruth Ozeki wrote the introduction.
What she wrote was interesting and painful.
I felt regret along with Ruth about how sad it was that this important book was toss-a-way for years.
The introduction was a powerful touching tribute to John Okada - [deceased] - who never got to see his forgotten book come to life.
The story is about a young Japanese man during WWII whose family was sent to the an internment camp…. and about his own return to Seattle.
There was a lot of controversy when this book was first published between the Japanese community.
In 1957, it seemed as though people were not ready to hear the truth of how much Japanese Americans struggled being in the United States.
John Okada died in 1971 … totally unaware that his book was re-discovered…
His voice was starting to finally be heard.
The horrors, shame, complexities, psychological anguish, racism - social injustices - the aftermath — being back from ‘the camps’…..
Japanese American immigrants were trying to move on…find their place in the world.
“No No Boy” reveals the tragedy- the struggles- post WWII complexities within the Japanese community of Seattle.
Many Japanese American citizens rebelled and refused to serve their county.
They felt they had made enough sacrifices from the past unfair treatments.
This was not my first time reading about our government sending Japanese Americans to internment camps —who were innocent American citizens.
It was tragic and wrong.
The author -John Okada wasn’t shy in writing about his resentment and anger.
His immigrant characters- parents and children- conflicted veterans- and no-no boys, were trying to heal -move on.
Too many people were completely mistreated.
What makes this book extraordinary is that it was written at a time nobody talked about the Japanese American painful struggles and how deeply it affected them.
With the recent Anti-Asian hate in the U.S. - this shameful period of history is certainly relevant today….
with many Japanese Americans still trying to reconcile their heritage, heal, be accepted and respected.
January 3, 2020
A little-known fact about American history: at the time of World War II, the U.S. War Department required men of Japanese descent to answer two “loyalty” questions: “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States? Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of American and faithfully defend it?”
Most answered “yes”; those who answered “no” were referred to as No-No Boys. Their reasons were complex; some had family living in Japan, others didn’t understand why they should give their lives to a country who had stripped them of all rights of citizenship (despite being born in America).
And that preamble brings us to this novel, written in J957 by John Okada (the Seattle-born author himself fought for America in the war). At the opening of the book, his No-No Boy, a disgraced Ichiro Yamada, has spent two years in prison at a time when war fever was at a peak pitch. He is universally despised by Americans (including those of Japanese descent) and his family – a half-crazy mother who believes Japan has won the war, a passive father, and a younger brother who despises him – makes him feel like a stranger in a strange land. In one particularly strong passage, Ichiro says “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.”
Who is Ichiro Yamada then, and where does he belong? That is the question at the crux of this novel. Riddled by shame, seething with anger, coping with mixed feelings about the only country he has known – its horrific treatment of those of Japanese descent combined with its its generosity of heart – Ichiro’s radicalized persona is a stand-in for second-generation Japanese men who were forced to confront this darkness.” Upon meeting one kind man, Ichiro ponders, “What words would transmit the bigness of his feelings to match the bigness of the heart of this American who in the manner of his living, was continually nursing and worrying the infant America into the greatness of its inheritance?”
With his secondary characters—Ichiro’s brother, his draft resister pals, and those who took a different path (notably Kenji who is slowly dying of his wounds and Ralph, who reenlisted), John Okada provides a 360-degree look at the men of those times. As a literary book, it can be a bit rough around the edges; it’s not perfect. But it is still compelling and unique and courageous. Ruth Ozeki, herself a wonderful writer, pens a superb foreword that captures the book’s meaning for a whole new generation of writers of Japanese descent. The questions this book raises are timeless and universal.
Most answered “yes”; those who answered “no” were referred to as No-No Boys. Their reasons were complex; some had family living in Japan, others didn’t understand why they should give their lives to a country who had stripped them of all rights of citizenship (despite being born in America).
And that preamble brings us to this novel, written in J957 by John Okada (the Seattle-born author himself fought for America in the war). At the opening of the book, his No-No Boy, a disgraced Ichiro Yamada, has spent two years in prison at a time when war fever was at a peak pitch. He is universally despised by Americans (including those of Japanese descent) and his family – a half-crazy mother who believes Japan has won the war, a passive father, and a younger brother who despises him – makes him feel like a stranger in a strange land. In one particularly strong passage, Ichiro says “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.”
Who is Ichiro Yamada then, and where does he belong? That is the question at the crux of this novel. Riddled by shame, seething with anger, coping with mixed feelings about the only country he has known – its horrific treatment of those of Japanese descent combined with its its generosity of heart – Ichiro’s radicalized persona is a stand-in for second-generation Japanese men who were forced to confront this darkness.” Upon meeting one kind man, Ichiro ponders, “What words would transmit the bigness of his feelings to match the bigness of the heart of this American who in the manner of his living, was continually nursing and worrying the infant America into the greatness of its inheritance?”
With his secondary characters—Ichiro’s brother, his draft resister pals, and those who took a different path (notably Kenji who is slowly dying of his wounds and Ralph, who reenlisted), John Okada provides a 360-degree look at the men of those times. As a literary book, it can be a bit rough around the edges; it’s not perfect. But it is still compelling and unique and courageous. Ruth Ozeki, herself a wonderful writer, pens a superb foreword that captures the book’s meaning for a whole new generation of writers of Japanese descent. The questions this book raises are timeless and universal.
January 31, 2010
While John Okada’s novel could be read for its historical perspective on the internment of Japanese-Americans and their experiences post-WWII, it was not written as a historical novel. No-No Boy was published just over a decade after the end of the war and is a vibrant, fresh exploration of the complex issues of identity (ethnic/cultural/racial/national).
With his cast of characters Okada is able to get at the reality and illusion of identity. Not only does he portray Ichiro’s struggle, but each character is also caught in his own struggle for identity, so that he become a symbol of himself. This is the ultimate paradox of the “identity crisis”.
No-No Boy was well ahead of its time and remains so. I read it looking for insight into the experience of others who find themselves outside the dominant social order. Okada is unflinching and accurate in his portrayal of the intersection of identity. The book may have been written more than half a century ago, but not very much has changed. The players might be different but its still the same game
www.jasonfmcdaniel.com
With his cast of characters Okada is able to get at the reality and illusion of identity. Not only does he portray Ichiro’s struggle, but each character is also caught in his own struggle for identity, so that he become a symbol of himself. This is the ultimate paradox of the “identity crisis”.
No-No Boy was well ahead of its time and remains so. I read it looking for insight into the experience of others who find themselves outside the dominant social order. Okada is unflinching and accurate in his portrayal of the intersection of identity. The book may have been written more than half a century ago, but not very much has changed. The players might be different but its still the same game
www.jasonfmcdaniel.com
March 26, 2007
No-no boys refer to the Japanese American men and Japanese Nationals who answered "no" to two specific questions on a survey conducted by the US government while they were interned in camps during WWII.
1. Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?
2. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?
It's important to understand the context surrounding the two questions from the questionnaire. The Japanese immigrants and Japanese born American children on the West Coast were forced to live in internment camps on the sole basis of our nation's outright racism toward the Japanese after the bombing on Pearl Harbor.
When our military instituted the draft and additional troops were in demand, our government decided that the formerly untrustworthy Japanese Americans men could be asked to serve for their nation. Those interned Japanese Americans who answered NO to question #1 did so because of the blatant disrespect and humiliation they and their families received with FDR's Executive Order 9066.
Also, many answered no to the first question because they thought answering yes was the same agreeing to the draft.
The second question posed even more contempt and confusion from the camps. By agreeing to swear allegiance to the US, the government was basically implying that the Japanese Americans were formerly swearing allegiance to Japan. Notwithstanding the fact that most of these second-generation Japanese Americans had never even set foot in Japan.
In addition, in 1946, Asians immigrants were not permitted to apply for citizenship or obtain citizenship b/c of our country's discriminatory policies. To ask the Isseis (first generation Japanese immigrants) to foreswear allegiance to Japan meant that they would become "men without a country".
Those who answered no to both questions were later known as "no-no boys". Because they answered NO to both questions, they were either sent to higher security internment camps or were imprisoned in jail with criminals. And after the war, many of them were looked down upon and in some cases, even resented within their own Japanese American community.
John Okada gives a human voice to the untold story of one of these no-no boys.
Considering this is one of the very first Asian American novels ever to be published, it should also be considered an important mildstone in contemporary American literature.
1. Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?
2. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?
It's important to understand the context surrounding the two questions from the questionnaire. The Japanese immigrants and Japanese born American children on the West Coast were forced to live in internment camps on the sole basis of our nation's outright racism toward the Japanese after the bombing on Pearl Harbor.
When our military instituted the draft and additional troops were in demand, our government decided that the formerly untrustworthy Japanese Americans men could be asked to serve for their nation. Those interned Japanese Americans who answered NO to question #1 did so because of the blatant disrespect and humiliation they and their families received with FDR's Executive Order 9066.
Also, many answered no to the first question because they thought answering yes was the same agreeing to the draft.
The second question posed even more contempt and confusion from the camps. By agreeing to swear allegiance to the US, the government was basically implying that the Japanese Americans were formerly swearing allegiance to Japan. Notwithstanding the fact that most of these second-generation Japanese Americans had never even set foot in Japan.
In addition, in 1946, Asians immigrants were not permitted to apply for citizenship or obtain citizenship b/c of our country's discriminatory policies. To ask the Isseis (first generation Japanese immigrants) to foreswear allegiance to Japan meant that they would become "men without a country".
Those who answered no to both questions were later known as "no-no boys". Because they answered NO to both questions, they were either sent to higher security internment camps or were imprisoned in jail with criminals. And after the war, many of them were looked down upon and in some cases, even resented within their own Japanese American community.
John Okada gives a human voice to the untold story of one of these no-no boys.
Considering this is one of the very first Asian American novels ever to be published, it should also be considered an important mildstone in contemporary American literature.
May 23, 2023
John Okada's No-No Boy represents a post-WWII appraisal of the reactions of Nisei (2nd generation Japanese-Americans) who responded in different ways to the internment of their people during the war & following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The novel begins with the return from prison of Ichiro Yamada, an American-born Japanese man who had been an engineering student prior to the war but who said "No" twice, to serving in the American military during WWII and also to denying any residual support for the country of Japan, the birth-country of his parents in a time of war.
Like many 2nd generation Americans with parents still rooted to their place of birth, Ichiro is caught between two cultures; beyond that, he is relegated to taking sides when his parents hold alternate positions about the very fact of being in America, with his mother seeing her status in the U.S. as only a temporary lodging.
Okada's prose is well-crafted and his authorial stance is quite compassionate, particularly since the novel was written by someone who served honorably during WWII, while his main character, Ichiro, refused to do so, with Ichiro's own younger brother denigrating him for this choice, eventually choosing to enlist in the army to show his contempt for his only sibling.
Meanwhile, Ichiro's friend, Kenji, was severely wounded in combat but accepting of the choice made by his friend, who refers to the refusal as "a moment of madness", one that seemingly condemns him forever, particularly when another friend who served, spits at Ichiro. Told that time would heal the rupture, he can't see this as a possibility. Ichiro considers his wounded & disabled friend better off & suggests he'd trade places with him.
There is also the issue of being born on American soil but still not being considered fully American if one is not white:
Still, a manager at a company offers Ichiro a job in spite of his background. And, a woman he is introduced to by Kenji & who shares intimacy with Ichiro early on, tells him that "America has a big heart". Much of the novel involves settling in to a particular time & place, adjusting to what Ichiro views as "all the hatred in the world" but with the realization that ultimately America is a country that in spite of the racial & ethnic prejudice, few people wish to leave.
I found the ending of No-No Boy a bit weak, as Ichiro continues to sift through the variables of his own existence without resolution. However, he seems at novel's end to have arrived at a position of "No-Yes", stained by his refusal to serve in the military but reconciled to his nationality.
Not until 1968 were the "No-No Boys" legally restored to U.S. citizenship. And not until 2018 did the Supreme Court overturn the decision on Exclusion Order #10, the internment of Japanese citizens during WWII.
*Within my review is the image of author John Okada + 2 images dealing with the WWII Internment of Japanese-Americans.
The novel begins with the return from prison of Ichiro Yamada, an American-born Japanese man who had been an engineering student prior to the war but who said "No" twice, to serving in the American military during WWII and also to denying any residual support for the country of Japan, the birth-country of his parents in a time of war.
Like many 2nd generation Americans with parents still rooted to their place of birth, Ichiro is caught between two cultures; beyond that, he is relegated to taking sides when his parents hold alternate positions about the very fact of being in America, with his mother seeing her status in the U.S. as only a temporary lodging.
Okada's prose is well-crafted and his authorial stance is quite compassionate, particularly since the novel was written by someone who served honorably during WWII, while his main character, Ichiro, refused to do so, with Ichiro's own younger brother denigrating him for this choice, eventually choosing to enlist in the army to show his contempt for his only sibling.
Meanwhile, Ichiro's friend, Kenji, was severely wounded in combat but accepting of the choice made by his friend, who refers to the refusal as "a moment of madness", one that seemingly condemns him forever, particularly when another friend who served, spits at Ichiro. Told that time would heal the rupture, he can't see this as a possibility. Ichiro considers his wounded & disabled friend better off & suggests he'd trade places with him.
There is also the issue of being born on American soil but still not being considered fully American if one is not white:
I could have gone into the army and shot & killed, and shot & killed some more but when one is born in America & learning to love it more & more every day without thinking it, it is not an easy thing to discover suddenly that being American is a terribly incomplete thing if one's face is not white & one's parents are Japanese of the country which attacked America. It is like being pulled asunder by a whirling tornado.In American society, at least during this period, an Irish-American named O'Hara is fully-accepted, while a Japanese-American named Ohara is rendered a 2nd-class citizen even if he served during WWII. Thus, an apostrophe can make an incredible difference!
Still, a manager at a company offers Ichiro a job in spite of his background. And, a woman he is introduced to by Kenji & who shares intimacy with Ichiro early on, tells him that "America has a big heart". Much of the novel involves settling in to a particular time & place, adjusting to what Ichiro views as "all the hatred in the world" but with the realization that ultimately America is a country that in spite of the racial & ethnic prejudice, few people wish to leave.
I found the ending of No-No Boy a bit weak, as Ichiro continues to sift through the variables of his own existence without resolution. However, he seems at novel's end to have arrived at a position of "No-Yes", stained by his refusal to serve in the military but reconciled to his nationality.
Not until 1968 were the "No-No Boys" legally restored to U.S. citizenship. And not until 2018 did the Supreme Court overturn the decision on Exclusion Order #10, the internment of Japanese citizens during WWII.
*Within my review is the image of author John Okada + 2 images dealing with the WWII Internment of Japanese-Americans.
July 6, 2024
NO-NO Boy
By John Okada
This book has a forward by Ruth Ozeki, and that is a must-read in the book. It really made me feel like I understood the author and felt the heartache and despair he went through. She also explains the timing of his manuscript and publications. He died before seeing that his work was appreciated.
He took the reader through a horrible, personal view as concentration camps were made for Asian Americans. What it was like for him, his family, and others. How they got the name No-No Boys. Even little things that readers wouldn't think to ask.
I found some places he repeated himself, but otherwise, it was a great first-hand view.
By John Okada
This book has a forward by Ruth Ozeki, and that is a must-read in the book. It really made me feel like I understood the author and felt the heartache and despair he went through. She also explains the timing of his manuscript and publications. He died before seeing that his work was appreciated.
He took the reader through a horrible, personal view as concentration camps were made for Asian Americans. What it was like for him, his family, and others. How they got the name No-No Boys. Even little things that readers wouldn't think to ask.
I found some places he repeated himself, but otherwise, it was a great first-hand view.
April 18, 2025
To see my updated review from April 7, 2025, click here.
Original Review, July 24, 2021
As well versed as I thought I was about the history of Japanese-American internment in WWII, I was unfamiliar with the term no-no boy. The story we want to remember, the one that makes us feel better about ourselves, that something good came out of it after all, is the history of the men who volunteered for the country that took them from their homes and livelihoods to be locked up with their families and neighbors. About how bravely they fought and sacrificed, mostly in Italy. Which they did. But there were a few, when told to take a oath that included agreeing to serve in the U.S. military and swearing allegiance to the nation, who answered both with NO. As a result, a no-no boy went to prison for draft evasion, only to be released after the war into fractured communities where they found little-to-no support for their actions.
Much like the film Bad Day at Black Rock (which has the the best fight scene in the history of cinema), in No-No Boy the actual experience of internment is in the far periphery of the plot, never really mentioned in any great detail, but it remains the essential fact of the plot. This story focuses on Ichiro who comes home after four years, two each in an internment camp and in prison for being a no-no boy.
But unlike the protagonist in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer , a young man whose problems are wealth, privilege, aimlessness and a sense of ennui, Ichiru is a young man with no money, status, who can’t find a purpose in life or the confidence that comes with it. In many ways a Bildungsroman that begins with his release from prison and encountering various people as he tries to decide on his future, which is seemingly ever-uncertain and narrow for a post-war Japanese American and even more so for a no-no boy.
This story of the first few days after his arrival home—but is it really home any more?—and trying to make sense of the world around him. Of his mother, who arrived from Japan with her husband more than 30 years ago with the sole intention of earning enough in their general store to return. They never bothered becoming “American.” His mother believes deeply that all the news about Japan’s defeat are propaganda; the letters from relatives describing the squalor at home is also just part of the charade. Or of a neighbor, a Japanese American who served with valor in World War I, who was sure his service would make people see their insanity, strikes an eerie parallel with German Jews who fought in the same war and met an even worse fate than he would. His best friend is a fellow internee who fought, lost part of his leg, and then waited stoically as he know each additional inch cut off would hasten his death. Ichiro seemingly encounters the spectrum of post-internment experience.
One thing they can never escape the simple fact that “…when one is born in America and learning to love it more and more every day without thinking it, it is not an easy thing to discover suddenly that 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.” In a rare moment of happiness, it strikes him, “It must be nice to be white and American and to be able to feel like this no matter where one goes to…” Last summer’s global responses to the murder of George Floyd and so much more racial injustice, if one thinks about it, were about this exactly this sentiment.
John Okada never lived to see his novel widely acknowledged as the first in the genre of Asian-American literature. More tragic than that, however, is that his widow burned the only manuscript of his second novel after so-called academic experts in Asian American culture and history encouraged her to do so. Okada’s story has some parallels with John Kennedy Toole and Ernst Haffner, authors who were noted for their first work and never lived to see the acclaim they deserved.
I would be remiss to end this review without acknowledging that I might not ever have learned about this novel had I not come across the music of Justin Soporito, an Asian-American who performs under the name No-No Boy. His album 1975 is filled with original songs about internment and other Asian-American experiences and very much worth exploring. His “syllabus” is quite interesting and the song The Best God Damn Band in Wyoming has a verse that sums up this terrible stain on American history for both the song and the novel:
Original Review, July 24, 2021
“Yet, America is the only home that he knows and there is some comfort in the thought that his own mistake was no more detestable than the mistake of the nation which doubted him in the moment of crisis.” - John Okada, letter to publisher, 1956Historians apply the term internment to the dark, shameful World War II-era policy when Americans rounded up other Americans of Japanese descent on the west coast shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Those who lived through it called it evacuation. An organized mob that wanted to keep an eye on them, regardless of how it frayed the nation’s fabric, and got legal justification to carry out their smug bigotry. Victims, despite the prices they paid, saw it as a temporary insanity. The quiet pact they made, knowingly or not, kept this history relatively quiet, with few exceptions, long after the civil rights movement swept through the nation. One of the victims of this self-imposed silence was John Okada, whose only published novel, in 1957, was salvaged from the forgotten heap of history years after his untimely death at the young age of 47 in 1971.
As well versed as I thought I was about the history of Japanese-American internment in WWII, I was unfamiliar with the term no-no boy. The story we want to remember, the one that makes us feel better about ourselves, that something good came out of it after all, is the history of the men who volunteered for the country that took them from their homes and livelihoods to be locked up with their families and neighbors. About how bravely they fought and sacrificed, mostly in Italy. Which they did. But there were a few, when told to take a oath that included agreeing to serve in the U.S. military and swearing allegiance to the nation, who answered both with NO. As a result, a no-no boy went to prison for draft evasion, only to be released after the war into fractured communities where they found little-to-no support for their actions.
Much like the film Bad Day at Black Rock (which has the the best fight scene in the history of cinema), in No-No Boy the actual experience of internment is in the far periphery of the plot, never really mentioned in any great detail, but it remains the essential fact of the plot. This story focuses on Ichiro who comes home after four years, two each in an internment camp and in prison for being a no-no boy.
But unlike the protagonist in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer , a young man whose problems are wealth, privilege, aimlessness and a sense of ennui, Ichiru is a young man with no money, status, who can’t find a purpose in life or the confidence that comes with it. In many ways a Bildungsroman that begins with his release from prison and encountering various people as he tries to decide on his future, which is seemingly ever-uncertain and narrow for a post-war Japanese American and even more so for a no-no boy.
This story of the first few days after his arrival home—but is it really home any more?—and trying to make sense of the world around him. Of his mother, who arrived from Japan with her husband more than 30 years ago with the sole intention of earning enough in their general store to return. They never bothered becoming “American.” His mother believes deeply that all the news about Japan’s defeat are propaganda; the letters from relatives describing the squalor at home is also just part of the charade. Or of a neighbor, a Japanese American who served with valor in World War I, who was sure his service would make people see their insanity, strikes an eerie parallel with German Jews who fought in the same war and met an even worse fate than he would. His best friend is a fellow internee who fought, lost part of his leg, and then waited stoically as he know each additional inch cut off would hasten his death. Ichiro seemingly encounters the spectrum of post-internment experience.
One thing they can never escape the simple fact that “…when one is born in America and learning to love it more and more every day without thinking it, it is not an easy thing to discover suddenly that 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.” In a rare moment of happiness, it strikes him, “It must be nice to be white and American and to be able to feel like this no matter where one goes to…” Last summer’s global responses to the murder of George Floyd and so much more racial injustice, if one thinks about it, were about this exactly this sentiment.
John Okada never lived to see his novel widely acknowledged as the first in the genre of Asian-American literature. More tragic than that, however, is that his widow burned the only manuscript of his second novel after so-called academic experts in Asian American culture and history encouraged her to do so. Okada’s story has some parallels with John Kennedy Toole and Ernst Haffner, authors who were noted for their first work and never lived to see the acclaim they deserved.
I would be remiss to end this review without acknowledging that I might not ever have learned about this novel had I not come across the music of Justin Soporito, an Asian-American who performs under the name No-No Boy. His album 1975 is filled with original songs about internment and other Asian-American experiences and very much worth exploring. His “syllabus” is quite interesting and the song The Best God Damn Band in Wyoming has a verse that sums up this terrible stain on American history for both the song and the novel:
Locked up in prison camps for no fuckin’ reason
May 31, 2019
“It’s because we’re American and because we’re Japanese and sometimes the two don’t mix. It’s all right to be German and American or Italian and American or Russian and American but, as things turned out, it wasn’t all right to be Japanese and American. You had to be one or the other.”
“I meant only to say that one must live in the real world. One must live naturally, not so? It is not always a happy life but, sad or happy, it can be a good life. It is like the seasons. It cannot always be fall.”
Question 27: Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?
Question 28: Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?
-From a 1943 “loyalty questionnaire” sent to incarcerated Japanese-Americans eligible for military service.
The protagonist of John Okada’s novel, Ichiro Yamada, is a No-No boy. One earned this moniker by answering no to both of the aforementioned questions and more often than not, being sent from an internment camp to a federal prison. From one prison to another.
In a sense though, that is what this novel is about. Not about the literal and temporal prison of bars and captivity, but the mental and spiritual prison one is never released from.
When Ichiro is released after two years in prison, he returns home to Seattle to find a world that has no use for him. His mother lives in denial, believing that Japan has actually won the war and is making preparations for when the Emperor comes to rescue her. She is sadly, not alone among her friends.
His father, a weak and amiable man, begins drinking to escape the pain that his wife is living through. He knows Japan has lost the war but fears for the mental consequences of pushing this on his wife. He is in Ichiro’s view:
"Neither husband nor father nor Japanese nor American but a diluted mixture of all”
Even Ichiro’s friends, Ken who lost a leg in the war, Emi whose husband refuses to come back to America out of guilt, and Freddie who like Ichiro is also a No-No boy and is hell bent on self destruction, are not immune from the aftermath of decisions made during the war.
Okada paints a painful picture of conflicted and tortured identity which slowly rips Ichiro apart with each new interaction.
If one was born in America, and chose to fought for America, does that make you American? For some Japanese-Americans who made this choice, the realization that for many white Americans it changes nothing, is too much to bear and therefore they spit (quite literally in some cases) on the No-No boys as a bid for acceptance to a society where they will always be a “Jap”. That they are hated by older Japanese who loathe them for fighting for “them” against “us” is yet another layer of torture they must navigate.
Okada writes:
“The young Japanese hates the not-so-young Japanese who is more Japanese than himself, and the not-so-young, in turn, hates the old Japanese who is all Japanese and, therefore, even more Japanese than he . . .”
The No-No boys in this novel similarly have no real identity or community to turn to. Japanese-Americans who fought in the war loathe them. White Americans despise them even more. Their only real solace lies in other No-No boys but in their friendship, lies a mirror to the shame they carry with them. There is a pointed scene where fellow No-No boy Freddie invites Ichiro to a poker game. Finding it diffcult to believe anyone would accept him, Ichiro asks who these guys are:
“What guys?”
“Guys like you and me. Who else?”
“Oh.” He couldn’t hide his disappointment, and Freddie noticed it with a frown.
It doesn’t have to be said that these men are also No-No boys. Simply that they are “like you and me”. Non No-No boys don’t hire No-No boys. No-no boys don’t go to non No-No boy bars or restaurants. And non No-No boys don’t socialize with No-No boys.
And yet for all the psychic trauma Japanese-Americans suffer in this story, it is not a story devoid of hope. Ichiro’s friend Ken who lost a leg in the war bears him no enmity. He in fact goes out of his way to show him kindness.
Similarly, Ichiro encounters a white man who is sympathetic to his past and offers him a job. It is only Ichiro’s self loathing and seeming desire to punish himself that prevent him from accepting such kindness.
Yes there are pockets of kindness in the world. And as someone says to Ichiro toward the end of the story, perhaps with time people will forget and things will go back to “normal”. Whatever normal once may have been.
Okada, writing in 1957, seems unsure. And yet were he alive today perhaps he would concur that while the memory of the No-No boys has dimmed, their plight, and the plight of all Americans who lack an identity and a spiritual home is one that refuses to fade away.
“I meant only to say that one must live in the real world. One must live naturally, not so? It is not always a happy life but, sad or happy, it can be a good life. It is like the seasons. It cannot always be fall.”
Question 27: Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?
Question 28: Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?
-From a 1943 “loyalty questionnaire” sent to incarcerated Japanese-Americans eligible for military service.
The protagonist of John Okada’s novel, Ichiro Yamada, is a No-No boy. One earned this moniker by answering no to both of the aforementioned questions and more often than not, being sent from an internment camp to a federal prison. From one prison to another.
In a sense though, that is what this novel is about. Not about the literal and temporal prison of bars and captivity, but the mental and spiritual prison one is never released from.
When Ichiro is released after two years in prison, he returns home to Seattle to find a world that has no use for him. His mother lives in denial, believing that Japan has actually won the war and is making preparations for when the Emperor comes to rescue her. She is sadly, not alone among her friends.
His father, a weak and amiable man, begins drinking to escape the pain that his wife is living through. He knows Japan has lost the war but fears for the mental consequences of pushing this on his wife. He is in Ichiro’s view:
"Neither husband nor father nor Japanese nor American but a diluted mixture of all”
Even Ichiro’s friends, Ken who lost a leg in the war, Emi whose husband refuses to come back to America out of guilt, and Freddie who like Ichiro is also a No-No boy and is hell bent on self destruction, are not immune from the aftermath of decisions made during the war.
Okada paints a painful picture of conflicted and tortured identity which slowly rips Ichiro apart with each new interaction.
If one was born in America, and chose to fought for America, does that make you American? For some Japanese-Americans who made this choice, the realization that for many white Americans it changes nothing, is too much to bear and therefore they spit (quite literally in some cases) on the No-No boys as a bid for acceptance to a society where they will always be a “Jap”. That they are hated by older Japanese who loathe them for fighting for “them” against “us” is yet another layer of torture they must navigate.
Okada writes:
“The young Japanese hates the not-so-young Japanese who is more Japanese than himself, and the not-so-young, in turn, hates the old Japanese who is all Japanese and, therefore, even more Japanese than he . . .”
The No-No boys in this novel similarly have no real identity or community to turn to. Japanese-Americans who fought in the war loathe them. White Americans despise them even more. Their only real solace lies in other No-No boys but in their friendship, lies a mirror to the shame they carry with them. There is a pointed scene where fellow No-No boy Freddie invites Ichiro to a poker game. Finding it diffcult to believe anyone would accept him, Ichiro asks who these guys are:
“What guys?”
“Guys like you and me. Who else?”
“Oh.” He couldn’t hide his disappointment, and Freddie noticed it with a frown.
It doesn’t have to be said that these men are also No-No boys. Simply that they are “like you and me”. Non No-No boys don’t hire No-No boys. No-no boys don’t go to non No-No boy bars or restaurants. And non No-No boys don’t socialize with No-No boys.
And yet for all the psychic trauma Japanese-Americans suffer in this story, it is not a story devoid of hope. Ichiro’s friend Ken who lost a leg in the war bears him no enmity. He in fact goes out of his way to show him kindness.
Similarly, Ichiro encounters a white man who is sympathetic to his past and offers him a job. It is only Ichiro’s self loathing and seeming desire to punish himself that prevent him from accepting such kindness.
Yes there are pockets of kindness in the world. And as someone says to Ichiro toward the end of the story, perhaps with time people will forget and things will go back to “normal”. Whatever normal once may have been.
Okada, writing in 1957, seems unsure. And yet were he alive today perhaps he would concur that while the memory of the No-No boys has dimmed, their plight, and the plight of all Americans who lack an identity and a spiritual home is one that refuses to fade away.
September 3, 2025
This novel presents the story of Ichiro, a no-no boy. The no-no boys were the young Japanese-American men in American internment camps that refused to be drafted into the American army. For their refusal, they went to prison. As Ichiro returns home from his release from prison he encounters the judgement and criticism of those that accepted the draft. As ex-American soldiers, they feel that Ichiro has betrayed his country. Ichiro himself regrets not accepting the draft and blames his mother, a hardcore Japanese nationalist, for his decision to reject the draft. However, this novel highlights that the situation is more complex than making the "right" choice. He visits the home of a family friend to find that one of his childhood friends was killed as an American soldier. He then meets a friend who was a no-no boy like himself. This friend is trying to live a life of pleasure to overcome his difficulties, but Ichiro sees that this type of existence is unfulfilling and empty. Later, he encounters another old friend who did join the American army, only to learn that his friend is slowly dying of an injury he received. Seeing all of these broken lives, he has the opportunity to think more carefully about his own life and the direction he should take going forward. This is a thought-provoking novel that deserves to be read by more people.
April 21, 2012
I found The No-No Boy on K.P. Kollenborn's Blog after I had read her novel Eyes Behind Belligerence. Since Eyes Behind Belligerence and No-No Boy had protagonists dealing with being Japanese American during and after World War II, it seemed natural to compare them. Both Kollenborn’s Jim Yoshimura and Okada’s Ichiro Yamada are what was known as “No-No Boys”. This means that after they had been interned, they refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the United States, and they refused to serve in the military during WWII. Yet these characters could not be less alike in their response to their experiences. Jim never doubted that he had made the correct decision. Ichiro was completely angst-ridden, and continually referred to his “mistake”.
A reader might ask who is more typical of “No-No Boys”, but I don’t believe that characters in a novel can or should be considered representative of an entire group. If an author is successful in creating characters that resemble actual human beings, then they are unique individuals that represent no one but themselves. If some readers respond to a character as being true to their own experiences, there may still be other readers who don’t identify with the character.
This is why I think that a better question for a reader to ask is why Jim Yoshimura and Ichiro Yamada had such disparate responses. This question can be answered by examining these characters’ backgrounds as they are portrayed in their respective novels. Jim and Ichiro are on opposite sides of a spectrum of behavior. I don’t think that either should be regarded as typical. They can be considered portraits of individuals in a time of a crisis ably portrayed by their authors.
I did prefer the character Kenji in No-No Boy. It isn't because Kenji fought in World War II. I genuinely respect the position of No-No Boys. Yet unlike Ichiro, Kenji accepted himself. I think that when people like themselves, they are more likable to others.
For a different version of this review, see my blog at: http://www.maskedpersona.blogspot.com
A reader might ask who is more typical of “No-No Boys”, but I don’t believe that characters in a novel can or should be considered representative of an entire group. If an author is successful in creating characters that resemble actual human beings, then they are unique individuals that represent no one but themselves. If some readers respond to a character as being true to their own experiences, there may still be other readers who don’t identify with the character.
This is why I think that a better question for a reader to ask is why Jim Yoshimura and Ichiro Yamada had such disparate responses. This question can be answered by examining these characters’ backgrounds as they are portrayed in their respective novels. Jim and Ichiro are on opposite sides of a spectrum of behavior. I don’t think that either should be regarded as typical. They can be considered portraits of individuals in a time of a crisis ably portrayed by their authors.
I did prefer the character Kenji in No-No Boy. It isn't because Kenji fought in World War II. I genuinely respect the position of No-No Boys. Yet unlike Ichiro, Kenji accepted himself. I think that when people like themselves, they are more likable to others.
For a different version of this review, see my blog at: http://www.maskedpersona.blogspot.com
December 23, 2019
This book was slow for me and then gained momentum about 1/2 of the way through to create a powerful and surprising exploration of American identity, as it intersects with race and power. It struck me how unique the voice of the book is - it’s not written as an explainer for white America about the aftermath of internment. In fact, it deals very little with internment specifically. Instead it’s an examination of Asian American psyche and identity, with internment and the main character’s imprisonment as context and substitute for many power dynamics that exist to this day.
July 22, 2016
No-No Boy by John Okada is another one of those books that make me want to shake it violently and go, "Where have you been all my life?! Why have you deprived me of this misery?"
"But...But..." stammers No-No Boy. "I've been here all this time. Since 1957. It's gotten quite lonely, really."
Lonely indeed. This was the only novel ever completed by John Okada, who died at the age of 47 thinking that no one, especially in the Asian American community, cared about his work. His wife burned his other novel in progress after the Japanese American Research Project at UCLA refused to look at his stuff. It was one of the first Japanese American novels to be published, and like the community it represented, it was mostly cast aside and ignored for years until people started picking it up and studying it for its literary value.
The basic story is set in Seattle, during World War II, in which Japanese Americans were herded like cattle into concentration camps. Their US citizenships weren't enough to make them American enough to not be treated as foreign spies, but yet they were still obligated to fight for the US.
That's right. Oh, you're not good enough of an American to be trusted to live free. But you're good enough to sacrifice your life or limbs for us.
Basic plot premise: Ichiro, the main character, goes before the court. But out of a sense of resentment at the United States' bad treatment of his parents and also loyalty to his mother (who had very patriotic beliefs in favor of Japan), he refuses to fight. As a result, he's sent to jail for two years. When he comes back, Seattle and its Japanese American community has fragmented between veterans and no-no boys (the ones who refused to fight for a country that had rejected them first) and parents and their children.
A big reason for these tensions within the Japanese American community is the differences in national and cultural loyalties. Despite their impoverished conditions, Ichiro's parents still subscribe to their old, original dream of making lots of money in the United States and then returning to Japan to live a comfortable life. Some young Japanese American veterans openly flaunt their war medals in order to assert their American loyalty, and Ichiro resents the fact that they feel that they need to assert their American-ness in order to be accepted.
This question of identity is explored throughout the entire book, and in terms of plot, it can be pretty haphazard and slow because not much happens on the outside until the latter half of the book. Most of the conflict is internal, where the exploration of identity, trauma, masculinity, and patriotism occurs in depth. We have the basic set-up: a no-no boy leaves prison and comes home. There are countless gems of angry social criticism throughout this book. Sometimes it feels like an autobiography and it's actually not - Okada actually went to war but created this novel to explore what would happen if someone said no.
There is an odd POV switch in the middle of the book, in which we suddenly (and conveniently) get a glimpse into Ichiro's friend Kenji's life. I appreciated this extra perspective, but it was rather asymmetrical and comes across as lazy to me since there was no prior POV switch beforehand.
The biggest weakness in this novel is the fact that Ichiro/narrator is prone to going off into redundant rants that don't necessarily add anything new to what he has already said.
Nonetheless, I was swept away by Ichiro's inner thoughts on what it means to be a Japanese American, and also by his anger at the ethnic division within the minority community, in which different groups turn on each other when they should be embracing each other. It's very clear that Okada has thought about these things a lot, and I truly empathize with Ichiro's turmoil and sense of alienation from everyone around him. His angst reminds me of Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, but with more concrete social problems at hand rather than a general disgust of the pretentiousness in people.
By the end, I have a much better understanding of the cultural struggles that the Japanese American community had - on a myopic level. I've read about their internment camps in history books, referred to in media and even memoirs of people who were children at the time. But this one carries with it the emotional weight of the identity crisis that the Nisei must have experienced during World War II, and their sense of disconnection between themselves, their parents, and the rest of their peers.
Glamorous Book Lounge
"But...But..." stammers No-No Boy. "I've been here all this time. Since 1957. It's gotten quite lonely, really."
Lonely indeed. This was the only novel ever completed by John Okada, who died at the age of 47 thinking that no one, especially in the Asian American community, cared about his work. His wife burned his other novel in progress after the Japanese American Research Project at UCLA refused to look at his stuff. It was one of the first Japanese American novels to be published, and like the community it represented, it was mostly cast aside and ignored for years until people started picking it up and studying it for its literary value.
The basic story is set in Seattle, during World War II, in which Japanese Americans were herded like cattle into concentration camps. Their US citizenships weren't enough to make them American enough to not be treated as foreign spies, but yet they were still obligated to fight for the US.
That's right. Oh, you're not good enough of an American to be trusted to live free. But you're good enough to sacrifice your life or limbs for us.
Basic plot premise: Ichiro, the main character, goes before the court. But out of a sense of resentment at the United States' bad treatment of his parents and also loyalty to his mother (who had very patriotic beliefs in favor of Japan), he refuses to fight. As a result, he's sent to jail for two years. When he comes back, Seattle and its Japanese American community has fragmented between veterans and no-no boys (the ones who refused to fight for a country that had rejected them first) and parents and their children.
A big reason for these tensions within the Japanese American community is the differences in national and cultural loyalties. Despite their impoverished conditions, Ichiro's parents still subscribe to their old, original dream of making lots of money in the United States and then returning to Japan to live a comfortable life. Some young Japanese American veterans openly flaunt their war medals in order to assert their American loyalty, and Ichiro resents the fact that they feel that they need to assert their American-ness in order to be accepted.
This question of identity is explored throughout the entire book, and in terms of plot, it can be pretty haphazard and slow because not much happens on the outside until the latter half of the book. Most of the conflict is internal, where the exploration of identity, trauma, masculinity, and patriotism occurs in depth. We have the basic set-up: a no-no boy leaves prison and comes home. There are countless gems of angry social criticism throughout this book. Sometimes it feels like an autobiography and it's actually not - Okada actually went to war but created this novel to explore what would happen if someone said no.
There is an odd POV switch in the middle of the book, in which we suddenly (and conveniently) get a glimpse into Ichiro's friend Kenji's life. I appreciated this extra perspective, but it was rather asymmetrical and comes across as lazy to me since there was no prior POV switch beforehand.
The biggest weakness in this novel is the fact that Ichiro/narrator is prone to going off into redundant rants that don't necessarily add anything new to what he has already said.
Nonetheless, I was swept away by Ichiro's inner thoughts on what it means to be a Japanese American, and also by his anger at the ethnic division within the minority community, in which different groups turn on each other when they should be embracing each other. It's very clear that Okada has thought about these things a lot, and I truly empathize with Ichiro's turmoil and sense of alienation from everyone around him. His angst reminds me of Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, but with more concrete social problems at hand rather than a general disgust of the pretentiousness in people.
By the end, I have a much better understanding of the cultural struggles that the Japanese American community had - on a myopic level. I've read about their internment camps in history books, referred to in media and even memoirs of people who were children at the time. But this one carries with it the emotional weight of the identity crisis that the Nisei must have experienced during World War II, and their sense of disconnection between themselves, their parents, and the rest of their peers.
Glamorous Book Lounge
March 19, 2023
Read it for a thesis committee I'm on and grateful for the opportunity to be introduced to a one-time novelist who died much too young (47) but if one were to write one novel, this would be it. The setting is a post-WWII America most white Americans don't know about--the complex and conflicted positioning of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. Okada builds a West Coast world of nightclubs, dire poverty, and urban grittiness to explore how Japanese Americans can or cannot ever be American.
The trauma inflicted on the different characters is immense from Ichiro the main character's who is co-erced by his mother to say no to being drafted to fight in WW2 and spends two years in prison to his friend Kenjii who has lost a leg fighting that continues to hurt to his friend Emi whose husband has been in Europe since the war ended not wanting to return. Okada, himself a war vet, nuances the differing attitudes and emotions that Ichiro's position as a no-no boy conjures up among strangers and friends. The novel's power lies in Ikiro's ability to evaluate and draw from these encounters so that he can begin to process what has happened to him as an American and why and to move beyond self-hatred and blame to some kind of forgiveness not only toward himself but toward the racist nation that put him in a double bind, a lose-lose situation.
Okada writes fiercely and passionately, making his characters and settings memorable. His exploration of the tenuous relationship that many othered Americans have with the US concerning citizenship are still so relevant today in post-9/11 America.
The trauma inflicted on the different characters is immense from Ichiro the main character's who is co-erced by his mother to say no to being drafted to fight in WW2 and spends two years in prison to his friend Kenjii who has lost a leg fighting that continues to hurt to his friend Emi whose husband has been in Europe since the war ended not wanting to return. Okada, himself a war vet, nuances the differing attitudes and emotions that Ichiro's position as a no-no boy conjures up among strangers and friends. The novel's power lies in Ikiro's ability to evaluate and draw from these encounters so that he can begin to process what has happened to him as an American and why and to move beyond self-hatred and blame to some kind of forgiveness not only toward himself but toward the racist nation that put him in a double bind, a lose-lose situation.
Okada writes fiercely and passionately, making his characters and settings memorable. His exploration of the tenuous relationship that many othered Americans have with the US concerning citizenship are still so relevant today in post-9/11 America.
January 14, 2020
This Asian American novel was so ahead of its time that it predates the concept of Asian America itself. One of our culture's greatest tragedies is that John Okada didn't live to claim the Asian American identity he so aptly embodied, and illustrated perhaps for the first time in our history, in the titular character. This masterpiece has gone mostly unnoticed from our own community, but it should be required reading for anyone who identifies as Asian American. If this were written by a white man, it would have been among ranks of the great American novels like The Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men.
May 13, 2022
A look at how Japanese Americans were treated during and after WWII, and whether or not joining the US military to fight the Japanese military was the "right" or "wrong" choice.
March 29, 2025
an undisputed classic of asian american literature whose status in the canon is truly unshakeable, this novel narrates the journey of a japanese american man (ichiro yamada) who comes home to seattle after being incarcerated for answering "no" to both questions on the infamous loyalty questionnaire. he struggles to reintegrate into society, paralyzed by the guilt and shame he feels for his choice and ostracized by the japanese american community who did serve in the US military. i have been meaning to read this book for more than 10 years now and i finally did it! it might have been my number one "book of shame" that i had never read. so i will begin this by saying that i am proud of myself for having read and finished this book when the emotional barrier (shame) to reading it has stopped me for so long.
but it did take me a month to finish, because i found it pretty boring and repetitive. there are some poignant, moving passages and at times it did surprise me with the quality of its prose. but i found the characters to be rather flat (especially the two main women, ichiro's mom and a love interest named emi) and the way the narrative moves a bit blah. though i read this because i ancitipate having to teach it in the future, i did not read it with an eyes towards teaching, i read it just as i would any other book and on that level i found it underwhelming. i know it is a book of its time so i am not expecting any radical kind of political vision from it, but i did find the development of ichiro's consciousness to be a bit whatever. he needed so much affirmation from white people and he drew a lot of strength from that--but in defense of the book not exclusively from them (but i feel like if i had to rank the white men are up there). i think the book teeters on the edge of almost saying something worthwhile about solidarity amongst communities of color but it never fully arrives there for me. also, i thought the ending was wild and weird.
would not recommend unless you're like me and are going to teach classes on japanese and okinawan americans for the rest of your life.
but it did take me a month to finish, because i found it pretty boring and repetitive. there are some poignant, moving passages and at times it did surprise me with the quality of its prose. but i found the characters to be rather flat (especially the two main women, ichiro's mom and a love interest named emi) and the way the narrative moves a bit blah. though i read this because i ancitipate having to teach it in the future, i did not read it with an eyes towards teaching, i read it just as i would any other book and on that level i found it underwhelming. i know it is a book of its time so i am not expecting any radical kind of political vision from it, but i did find the development of ichiro's consciousness to be a bit whatever. he needed so much affirmation from white people and he drew a lot of strength from that--but in defense of the book not exclusively from them (but i feel like if i had to rank the white men are up there). i think the book teeters on the edge of almost saying something worthwhile about solidarity amongst communities of color but it never fully arrives there for me. also, i thought the ending was wild and weird.
would not recommend unless you're like me and are going to teach classes on japanese and okinawan americans for the rest of your life.
March 7, 2022
"Why is it that in my freedom, I feel more imprisoned in the wrongness of myself and the thing I did than when I was in prison? Am I never really to know again what it is to be American? If there should be an answer, what is it? What penalty is it that I must pay to justify my living as I so fervently desire to? There is, I am afraid, no answer. There is no retribution for one who is guilty of treason, and that is what I am guilty of. The fortunate get shot. I must live my punishment."
No-No Boy wrecks my soul. It moves me in a way that no other class-required text has ever done. This book is not at all what I expected. I thought I was going into a story about a man totally confident in his decisions; a righteous resistance against the actions of the American government during Japanese internment.
No, no this isn't that kind of book at all. This is a story about a tortured man who views himself as unworthy of redemption; a man who must face against the world he denounced, believing himself to be a worthless burden. Ichiro is not a very likable protagonist. He's unjustifiably cruel at times, holding such a pessimistic attitude. Yet, when viewing the world through his perspective, it's not difficult to understand the source of his untamable anger. Ichiro shifts aimlessly between two identities actively hostile towards him. As an American, Ichiro is regarded as a traitor, a low-life unwilling to follow national orders. As a Japanese person, his community holds intense resentment, furious at his refusal to comply with the model-minority archetypes that have stabilized their lives.
Calling Ichiro a complex character is the understatement of the year. His haunting soliloquies invade your mind. It's going to take me a while to get over them. I mean, just look at this beast of a sentence:
"And, as his heart mercifully stacked the blocks of hope into the pattern of America which would someday hold an unquestioned place for him, his mind said no, it is not to be, and the castle tumbled and was swallowed up by the darkness of his soul, for time might cloud the memories of others but the trouble was inside of him and time would not soften that."
Quotes like that pop up every few pages. Like wow, I didn't think it was possible for an author to create banger, gut-wrenching lines this consistently. John Okada was a writer ahead of his time, and it breaks my heart that America simply wasn't ready to appreciate his work when it was first published. He deserves all the hard-earned praise.
I've spent so much time talking about Ichiro, but all the other characters in this novel are fantastic as well. We have Ichiro's mother; a woman filled with unshakable pride that her son resisted against American law; a woman blindly loyal to the fallen Japanese empire, one that Ichiro feels no connection to. We have Ichiro's father; a man that blames himself for the fallout of his family; a man who turns to drink instead of actively repairing the emotional walls arising between his wife and sons. Finally, we have Kenji, who my heart continues to yearn for. He's the stark contrast to Ichiro; a generally optimistic man who chose to fight in the war, losing his leg while doing so. His wound is a constant physical reminder of the choice he made; the choice to renounce his Japanese identity, and serve the country that imprisoned him and his community.
This novel accomplishes so much in barely over 200 pages. I wish I was shown Okada's work so much earlier. I wish I was better educated in high school about the true extent of internment on Japanese Americans. I wish this book was more well known outside the Asian-American literary canon. So please, I know I ask people to check out books a lot, but I truly, incandescently mean it this time. I don't care who you are, but No-No Boy is a novel you need to read.
September 10, 2017
Brilliantly written, this book reminds me of Steinbeck in that it is a very complex book in deceptively simple language. It packs a punch. I had intended to pass this book on once I finished it but found that I want to keep this one, it has importance both historically and psychologically.
It was written by John Okada, a Japanese American who served in the U.S. military during WWll, but his subject matter is a young Japanese man who was two years in an internment camp as a Japanese American and then two years in prison for declining to declare loyalty to the U.S. and refusing to serve in the U.S. military. The young Japanese men who had done this were called No-No Boys. When the book opens our No-No Boy has just returned to his home town of Seattle. He immediately encounters hatred from the Japanese who served in the military, he is scorned in his community. The person who is proud of him is his mother, the person who most strongly implanted his identity as Japanese. His parents are both Japanese, living in American for many years but never intending to stay, two boys born to them in America. The younger brother hates him for what he has done and joins the U.S. military on his 18th birthday. The mother is delusional, thinks Japan has won the war and the supposed defeat of Japan is just U.S. propaganda. Ichiro, our No-No boy, knows better but his mother will not be convinced, she has become mentally ill with cognitive dissonance. Father tries to placate everyone and drinks himself senseless. Ichiro is lost, in deep identity crisis and self-hatred, problems which play out in his actions and interactions in the story. A brutal but beautiful book, important.
Highly recommended.
It was written by John Okada, a Japanese American who served in the U.S. military during WWll, but his subject matter is a young Japanese man who was two years in an internment camp as a Japanese American and then two years in prison for declining to declare loyalty to the U.S. and refusing to serve in the U.S. military. The young Japanese men who had done this were called No-No Boys. When the book opens our No-No Boy has just returned to his home town of Seattle. He immediately encounters hatred from the Japanese who served in the military, he is scorned in his community. The person who is proud of him is his mother, the person who most strongly implanted his identity as Japanese. His parents are both Japanese, living in American for many years but never intending to stay, two boys born to them in America. The younger brother hates him for what he has done and joins the U.S. military on his 18th birthday. The mother is delusional, thinks Japan has won the war and the supposed defeat of Japan is just U.S. propaganda. Ichiro, our No-No boy, knows better but his mother will not be convinced, she has become mentally ill with cognitive dissonance. Father tries to placate everyone and drinks himself senseless. Ichiro is lost, in deep identity crisis and self-hatred, problems which play out in his actions and interactions in the story. A brutal but beautiful book, important.
Highly recommended.
November 14, 2013
Un libro muy importante por al menos dos razones:
1) la meticulosa descripción de la experiencia de un emigrante japonés de segunda generación en los Estados Unidos, en una época en la que su ambivalencia hacia su identidad nacional, cultural y familiar sale a la luz de forma dolorosa gracias a la IIª Guerra Mundial, y
2) que es un relato escrito por un japonés-americano (perdónenme el término) que trata en parte sobre los campos de internamiento en los que los japoneses que vivían en suelo americano y se negaban a luchar por los EE. UU. fueron encerrados durante la guerra. Pero es sobre todo un relato de la época de postguerra: el racismo y humillación que sufrió esta minoría, la manera en la que intentaron asentarse en la sociedad o cómo la rechazaron, las oportunidades a las que tenían acceso según hubiesen actuado durante la guerra, etc.
El estilo a veces se vuelve burdo, y tal vez las reflexiones del protagonista van muy paso a paso. Pero en mi opinión el tema y la historia elevan el libro por encima de sus defectos.
1) la meticulosa descripción de la experiencia de un emigrante japonés de segunda generación en los Estados Unidos, en una época en la que su ambivalencia hacia su identidad nacional, cultural y familiar sale a la luz de forma dolorosa gracias a la IIª Guerra Mundial, y
2) que es un relato escrito por un japonés-americano (perdónenme el término) que trata en parte sobre los campos de internamiento en los que los japoneses que vivían en suelo americano y se negaban a luchar por los EE. UU. fueron encerrados durante la guerra. Pero es sobre todo un relato de la época de postguerra: el racismo y humillación que sufrió esta minoría, la manera en la que intentaron asentarse en la sociedad o cómo la rechazaron, las oportunidades a las que tenían acceso según hubiesen actuado durante la guerra, etc.
El estilo a veces se vuelve burdo, y tal vez las reflexiones del protagonista van muy paso a paso. Pero en mi opinión el tema y la historia elevan el libro por encima de sus defectos.
January 20, 2022
The book was pretty good but damn that foreword by Ruth Ozeki was incredible.
August 5, 2023
... this was way too heavy for its own good, fuck.
August 23, 2020
Aight. Dang. 5/5
Ichiro Yamada, a Japanese American man, comes back home from being imprisoned for refusing to fight for the United States after he and his family were sent to internment camps on the west coast. Apparently, he was not American enough to roam the streets with the ghost of Pearl Harbour still lurking around the corners. The novel follows him as he struggles with the many challenges both in the Japanese community in the US, the post WW2 society, and his own identity.
After a bit of digging online, I noticed many people mention that the term 'Asian American' predates John Okada himself. Part of me wonders how I would cope not having a name or tag that I could somewhat comfortably identify with. Lawson Fusao Inada's Introduction explains how Okada's No-No Boy was 'wrong' at the time it was published. No one read it, no one talked about it, and Okada died without knowing the relevance it now seems to have in the Asian American community. Speaking for myself, who is neither Asian nor American, but still struggles with the big idea of my identity, I found it to be a great novel in which Ichiro struggles mostly with himself, but also with how our fears turn to hate, hate turns to war, and after wars comes more hate.
I do have to say this was not an engaging book for me. It is slow and I found it mentally disturbing and frustrating (as it should be, considering the topic), but this is getting 5 stars because I feel I'll be thinking about this quite a lot.
Anyhow, I'd say the sentence that kinda got me the most for no reason is when Ichiro is at a bar: “Not many places a Jap can go to and feel so completely at ease. It must be nice to be white and American and to be able to feel like this no matter where one goes to, but I won't cry about that.”
Ok, bye.
Ichiro Yamada, a Japanese American man, comes back home from being imprisoned for refusing to fight for the United States after he and his family were sent to internment camps on the west coast. Apparently, he was not American enough to roam the streets with the ghost of Pearl Harbour still lurking around the corners. The novel follows him as he struggles with the many challenges both in the Japanese community in the US, the post WW2 society, and his own identity.
After a bit of digging online, I noticed many people mention that the term 'Asian American' predates John Okada himself. Part of me wonders how I would cope not having a name or tag that I could somewhat comfortably identify with. Lawson Fusao Inada's Introduction explains how Okada's No-No Boy was 'wrong' at the time it was published. No one read it, no one talked about it, and Okada died without knowing the relevance it now seems to have in the Asian American community. Speaking for myself, who is neither Asian nor American, but still struggles with the big idea of my identity, I found it to be a great novel in which Ichiro struggles mostly with himself, but also with how our fears turn to hate, hate turns to war, and after wars comes more hate.
I do have to say this was not an engaging book for me. It is slow and I found it mentally disturbing and frustrating (as it should be, considering the topic), but this is getting 5 stars because I feel I'll be thinking about this quite a lot.
Anyhow, I'd say the sentence that kinda got me the most for no reason is when Ichiro is at a bar: “Not many places a Jap can go to and feel so completely at ease. It must be nice to be white and American and to be able to feel like this no matter where one goes to, but I won't cry about that.”
Ok, bye.
January 30, 2022
Die no-no Boys: Japanese-Americans, die im Zuge des Angriffs auf Pearl Harbor zu Tausenden an der amerikanischen Westküste in Internierungslager kamen, sich dem Kriegsdienst verweigerten und nicht Japan abschworen, für weitere 2 Jahre ins Gefängnis kamen und danach irgendwie wieder in der Gesellschaft versuchten Fuß zu fassen.
Eine schonungslose und trostlose Story über den no-no Boy Ishiro, seine Familie, seinen besten Freund, einem Bekannten (auch no- no Boy), einer Frau, möglichen Arbeitgebern und ein paar Pöblern.
Die meisten Charaktere und Situationen sind sehr strikt: schwarz oder weiß- Krass, völlig Gaga oder durch und durch gut/vorbildlich und weise. Dadurch wirkte vieles in der ersten Hälfte recht stumpf und holzhammerartig auf mich.
Allerdings kommt hierdurch die schwere Tragik der Situation um die Japanese-Americans unheimlich gut zur Geltung. Dafür musste aber Steinchen für Steinchen zusammengetragen werden, bis mir klar wurde wie gut das Buch ist.
Generell schafft John Okada einen tiefen Einblick in die Seelenleben und die vielfältige Zerrissenheit der Figuren und wie schwer es ist Hoffnung zu haben, Hoffnung sehen zu können und sie zu verinnerlichen.
Eine schonungslose und trostlose Story über den no-no Boy Ishiro, seine Familie, seinen besten Freund, einem Bekannten (auch no- no Boy), einer Frau, möglichen Arbeitgebern und ein paar Pöblern.
Die meisten Charaktere und Situationen sind sehr strikt: schwarz oder weiß- Krass, völlig Gaga oder durch und durch gut/vorbildlich und weise. Dadurch wirkte vieles in der ersten Hälfte recht stumpf und holzhammerartig auf mich.
Allerdings kommt hierdurch die schwere Tragik der Situation um die Japanese-Americans unheimlich gut zur Geltung. Dafür musste aber Steinchen für Steinchen zusammengetragen werden, bis mir klar wurde wie gut das Buch ist.
Generell schafft John Okada einen tiefen Einblick in die Seelenleben und die vielfältige Zerrissenheit der Figuren und wie schwer es ist Hoffnung zu haben, Hoffnung sehen zu können und sie zu verinnerlichen.
April 20, 2023
This read was beyond words. Over and over, I thought to myself "This paragraph was so brilliant, it might be the best of the book so far" - only to see the quality being matched constantly. The beauty and the effectiveness of Okada's writing style really stroke a chord with me and left me with no more words to do this masterpiece justice.
Read
April 23, 2025what a beautiful, somber read
February 28, 2021
There was a period where I read this novel once a year for class or for one academic project or another, but this is my first time back to it in at least a decade. It has its over-the-top parts, but it holds up as a major work of art defining what it means to understand oneself as simultaneously ethnic and American.
I have long liked to think of this novel as opening with a double negative. Any Japanese-American who declined to serve in the U.S. military would have been called a “no-no boy,” but Ichiro goes further. He has said no to that dubious lifeline toward reclaiming American citizenship, but he has then also said no to his mother’s dream of a still-standing Japan. He talks of being comprised of two halves, one American and one Japanese, and he has managed to negate both of them.
The novel-length question that follows is whether, as grammar suggests, a double-negative can render a positive.
As angry as this novel can be, it’s also saturated with hope. No one ever promises that America will be perfect or even that it will live up to all its promises. As Okada writes, though, he seems to suggest that – as one metaphor puts it toward the end – that the apple has brown spots yet is not rotten at the core.
I continue to love the character of Kenji, a Japanese-American who did serve against the Germans, a man who won medals for bravery and then wounded in the leg, found that he was dying. As his leg rots inch by inch, Kenji knows he’s dying. In one way of seeing it, he chooses to bequeath the citizenship he has reclaimed to Ichiro. He’s the ultimate hero, but it’s cost him his future, his literal life. Ichiro believes his decision, while preserving his life, has cost him his future. Kenji, knowing they cannot exchange their fates, determines to give as much of his blessing as he can to Ichiro.
I can imagine the novel making that exchange its central metaphor, but Okada is far more ambitious. In some ways, Ichiro rejects the gift. (It’s ambiguous at the end whether he returns to Emi, the woman whom Kenji has urged him to become close to.) He rejects many others as well, and he is constantly reminded of America’s capacity to be “large” as well as small-minded.
The final scene here hits me as it always does: Ichiro’s fellow no-no boy, Freddie, has spiraled out of control, seeking a fight with Bull, one representative of hateful America. In a confrontation the mechanics of which still confuse me unless I think about them so carefully that I lose track of the implications, Freddie is killed. Like Kenji, he is someone who cannot survive the conflict of the war – their moment meant choosing either America or Japan; each dies in large measure because he is born at the wrong moment to be a Japanese in America.
Those two frame a continuum: the one did everything “right” in terms of the broader ethnic passage from immigrant to American. The other did it all wrong, balling up his fists to fight an America he can’t bring himself to leave. That, I think, is more the central dynamic of the novel. It asks the question of whether there is a genuine in-between, a positive vision that the double-negative defines.
What strikes me here in ways I did not remember, though, is the peculiar way in which Ichiro reacts to Freddie’s death. I remember the pity he has for Bull, but I don’t remember the full measure of identification that I see on this reading. Bull is literally that, a representative of America’s bullshit. He’s horrified about having seen so many of his friends killed. He’s suffering, too.
To answer the fundamental question of the novel, I think Ichiro sees his middle-ground through the lens of that pity. He buys Bull a drink and gently tells him of Freddie’s death. He does so, I believe, because he recognizes that we all suffer. He sees a measure of himself in Bull, and that’s a step toward seeing a part of himself in America.
Part of me does still wish that Okada resolved some of the narrative more conventionally. I mean, what happens to Emi or to Ichiro’s brother Taro? Still, I admire more than condemn that narrative choice. Ichiro has learned something painful but also beautiful. The America of the book is large enough to let him reinvent himself someday. It’s going to take patience and faith, and it’s going to take remembering that America is never as perfect as it claims nor quite so broken as we fear.
I have long liked to think of this novel as opening with a double negative. Any Japanese-American who declined to serve in the U.S. military would have been called a “no-no boy,” but Ichiro goes further. He has said no to that dubious lifeline toward reclaiming American citizenship, but he has then also said no to his mother’s dream of a still-standing Japan. He talks of being comprised of two halves, one American and one Japanese, and he has managed to negate both of them.
The novel-length question that follows is whether, as grammar suggests, a double-negative can render a positive.
As angry as this novel can be, it’s also saturated with hope. No one ever promises that America will be perfect or even that it will live up to all its promises. As Okada writes, though, he seems to suggest that – as one metaphor puts it toward the end – that the apple has brown spots yet is not rotten at the core.
I continue to love the character of Kenji, a Japanese-American who did serve against the Germans, a man who won medals for bravery and then wounded in the leg, found that he was dying. As his leg rots inch by inch, Kenji knows he’s dying. In one way of seeing it, he chooses to bequeath the citizenship he has reclaimed to Ichiro. He’s the ultimate hero, but it’s cost him his future, his literal life. Ichiro believes his decision, while preserving his life, has cost him his future. Kenji, knowing they cannot exchange their fates, determines to give as much of his blessing as he can to Ichiro.
I can imagine the novel making that exchange its central metaphor, but Okada is far more ambitious. In some ways, Ichiro rejects the gift. (It’s ambiguous at the end whether he returns to Emi, the woman whom Kenji has urged him to become close to.) He rejects many others as well, and he is constantly reminded of America’s capacity to be “large” as well as small-minded.
The final scene here hits me as it always does: Ichiro’s fellow no-no boy, Freddie, has spiraled out of control, seeking a fight with Bull, one representative of hateful America. In a confrontation the mechanics of which still confuse me unless I think about them so carefully that I lose track of the implications, Freddie is killed. Like Kenji, he is someone who cannot survive the conflict of the war – their moment meant choosing either America or Japan; each dies in large measure because he is born at the wrong moment to be a Japanese in America.
Those two frame a continuum: the one did everything “right” in terms of the broader ethnic passage from immigrant to American. The other did it all wrong, balling up his fists to fight an America he can’t bring himself to leave. That, I think, is more the central dynamic of the novel. It asks the question of whether there is a genuine in-between, a positive vision that the double-negative defines.
What strikes me here in ways I did not remember, though, is the peculiar way in which Ichiro reacts to Freddie’s death. I remember the pity he has for Bull, but I don’t remember the full measure of identification that I see on this reading. Bull is literally that, a representative of America’s bullshit. He’s horrified about having seen so many of his friends killed. He’s suffering, too.
To answer the fundamental question of the novel, I think Ichiro sees his middle-ground through the lens of that pity. He buys Bull a drink and gently tells him of Freddie’s death. He does so, I believe, because he recognizes that we all suffer. He sees a measure of himself in Bull, and that’s a step toward seeing a part of himself in America.
Part of me does still wish that Okada resolved some of the narrative more conventionally. I mean, what happens to Emi or to Ichiro’s brother Taro? Still, I admire more than condemn that narrative choice. Ichiro has learned something painful but also beautiful. The America of the book is large enough to let him reinvent himself someday. It’s going to take patience and faith, and it’s going to take remembering that America is never as perfect as it claims nor quite so broken as we fear.
September 28, 2022
My 2016 review: John Okada's 1957 novel was very hard to find, but now I feel very close to him. Okada was the writer who first captured the complex, nuanced, and disturbing emotions of Americans forced to question their American identities -- the WWII Nisei (American born children of Japanese immigrants) who were imprisoned in barbed wire "camps" after Pearl Harbor, then given "the choice" to disavow their cultural heritage, and fight as US soldiers. Okada's No-No Boy character is based on the experiences of American boys who refused to be drafted while their families were imprisoned, and were subsequently put into federal prison. John Okada himself was a WWII veteran of the US Army, but he was courageous enough to write about the terrible emotional and spiritual price paid by Americans thrown into impossible situations by the country they love. A valuable story for our times.
My 2022 review: Rereading John Okada’s No No Boy is like waking from a dream. When I first read Okada’s novel, I couldn’t relate to Okada’s protagonist, a young Nisei man Ichiro who was imprisoned for refusing to fight for his country during WWII. My parents immigrated from Japan after WWII. So the issues Okada’s novel deals with - Ichiro’s troubles adjusting back to civilian life after the double shame of incarceration for his race, and then his No-No status had nothing to do with me. Right? Wrong.
Shortly before my father died in 2015, I learned we had relatives who were born and grew up in California before the war. I was not the first Nisei in the family as I had believed all my life. Dad had kept them and this part of his life secret from me. Only later did I learn the ugly truth. Now I know my father probably did this to try to shield me (and himself) from the trauma of the war years. I discovered that not only were my California relatives incarcerated in Manzanar, a Nisei relative was trapped in Tokyo during the war. I learned these relatives were so traumatized, one renounced his American citizenship and another broke down and probably killed himself.
I was born the year No No Boy was published - 1957. No one appreciated the significance of John Okada’s novel at the time. It went out of print and Okada died without any real recognition. But his words ring true and clear for me now as I deal with similar issues in the writing of my first novel. How does an American of an “enemy race” reconcile their mixed feelings for America and their ancestors’ homeland? And how do they forgive themselves as well as forgive those in their own community for the hatred, racism and fear that infects everyone during war? Whites, blacks, Jews, and Japanese-Americans are all part of the story. Okada is able to use story to show the complex emotions of Ichiro the No-No boy, Ken a fatally injured vet, and Ichiro’s mentally unbalanced mother who isolated herself from her sons and her community.
I live now in Seattle, Okada’s hometown and the setting of No No Boy. Okada’s details about the setting as well as his characters shine like a beacon as I struggle to tell my own story of Nisei relatives during WWII. I’m amazed and awed by Okada’s insights into the complicated psychological state of the Japanese American community so soon after the war was over. Okada pulls no punches in his depictions of conflict within the Japanese American community. At the same time, No-No Boy’s message is not one of bitterness or hatred, but rather one of love and acceptance of all of our flaws, as a nation and a people.
My 2022 review: Rereading John Okada’s No No Boy is like waking from a dream. When I first read Okada’s novel, I couldn’t relate to Okada’s protagonist, a young Nisei man Ichiro who was imprisoned for refusing to fight for his country during WWII. My parents immigrated from Japan after WWII. So the issues Okada’s novel deals with - Ichiro’s troubles adjusting back to civilian life after the double shame of incarceration for his race, and then his No-No status had nothing to do with me. Right? Wrong.
Shortly before my father died in 2015, I learned we had relatives who were born and grew up in California before the war. I was not the first Nisei in the family as I had believed all my life. Dad had kept them and this part of his life secret from me. Only later did I learn the ugly truth. Now I know my father probably did this to try to shield me (and himself) from the trauma of the war years. I discovered that not only were my California relatives incarcerated in Manzanar, a Nisei relative was trapped in Tokyo during the war. I learned these relatives were so traumatized, one renounced his American citizenship and another broke down and probably killed himself.
I was born the year No No Boy was published - 1957. No one appreciated the significance of John Okada’s novel at the time. It went out of print and Okada died without any real recognition. But his words ring true and clear for me now as I deal with similar issues in the writing of my first novel. How does an American of an “enemy race” reconcile their mixed feelings for America and their ancestors’ homeland? And how do they forgive themselves as well as forgive those in their own community for the hatred, racism and fear that infects everyone during war? Whites, blacks, Jews, and Japanese-Americans are all part of the story. Okada is able to use story to show the complex emotions of Ichiro the No-No boy, Ken a fatally injured vet, and Ichiro’s mentally unbalanced mother who isolated herself from her sons and her community.
I live now in Seattle, Okada’s hometown and the setting of No No Boy. Okada’s details about the setting as well as his characters shine like a beacon as I struggle to tell my own story of Nisei relatives during WWII. I’m amazed and awed by Okada’s insights into the complicated psychological state of the Japanese American community so soon after the war was over. Okada pulls no punches in his depictions of conflict within the Japanese American community. At the same time, No-No Boy’s message is not one of bitterness or hatred, but rather one of love and acceptance of all of our flaws, as a nation and a people.
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