Issei Quotes

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

“No, he said to himself as he watched her part the curtains and start into the store. There was a time when I was your son, there was a time that I no longer remember when you used to smile a mother’s smile and tell me stories about gallant and fierce warriors who protected their lords with blades of shining steel, and about the old woman who found the peach in the stream and took it home, and when her husband split it in half, a husky little boy tumbled out to fill their hearts with boundless joy. I was that lad and the peach, and you were the old woman. And we were Japanese with Japanese feelings and Japanese pride, and Japanese thoughts, because it was alright then to be Japanese and feel and think all the things that Japanese do even if we lived in America. Then there came a time when I was only half Japanese, because one is not born in America and raised in America and taught in America, and one does not speak and swear and drink and smoke and play and fight and see and hear in America among Americans in American streets and houses without becoming American and loving it. But I did not love enough – for you were still half my mother, and that was thereby still half Japanese, and when the war came and they told me to fight for America I was not strong enough to fight you, and I was not strong enough to fight the bitterness which made the half me which was you bigger than the half me which was America. And really the whole of me that I could not see or feel - now that I know the truth when it is late - and the of half me which was you is no longer there. I am only half of me, and the half that remains is American by law because the government was wise and strong enough to know why it was that I could not fight for America, and did not strip me of my birthright. But it is not enough to be only half an American and know that it is an empty half. I am not your son. And I am not Japanese. And I am not American.”
― John Okada, No-no Boy