Analysis Of No-No Boy Vs. Ichiro

In Jamie Ford’s historical fiction Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, this split narrative focuses on two eras: 1942 and 1986. Within these era’s, Ford’s novel focuses on a Chinese boy, Henry Lee, and what it was like to grow up in the international district with prejudice everywhere, especially in his own family being a first generation American. His novel tells the story of Henry, as well as a Japanese girl by the name of Keiko. The novel tells the story of these two young friends and the hardships faced when the government sends Keiko and her family away to the Japanese internment camps in the Northwest in the 1940’s. His novel displays the effects

There are many things that happened to Japanese-American immigrants during World War 2 that people in this time period aren’t really familiar with. A story from a Japanese woman, Jeanne Wakatsuki-Houston, who was born and lived in this era, with help from her husband, James D. Houston, explains and sheds some light during the times where internment camps still prevailed. The writing piece titled “Arrival at Manzanar", takes place during her childhood and the Second World War. In the beginning, Jeanne and her family were living a calm and peaceful life in a predominantly white neighborhood, until disaster struck the world and they were forced to move due to escalating tensions between Japanese Orientals and white Americans. At the time, Japanese-Americans, like Jeanne, were forced to live in an internment camp, which is a prison of sorts, due to the war with Japan. The text is being told through a first person point-of-view in which Jeanne herself tells the story through her experiences during the war. In that story, which contains only a part of the original text, much of the setting took place either prior to and during the time she was sent to the internment camps and describes her struggle with it. This story clearly states the importance of family and perseverance which is shown through her use of pathos, definition, and chronological storytelling.

Japanese American families were sent to internment camps located at a desert in Utah almost in less than 24 hours during World War ll. It was supposed to be luxurious and a dream, yet it was the complete opposite. In the book, When the emperor was divine, Julie Otsuka describes each character and their stories through different points of views. She tells their story by recounting each of the main character's emotional experiences while showing the life of Japanese Americans and how they were labeled in others eyes. Otsuka writes not only about the venture of being taken to an internment camp, but how each character changes in the process. Through each person comes a story and why they changed into somewhat the opposite of their

Roger Daniels’ book Prisoners without Trial is another book that describes the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. This piece discusses about the background that led up to the internment, the internment itself, and what happened afterwards. The internment and relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II was an injustice prompted by political and racial motivations. The author’s purpose of this volume is to discuss the story in light of the redress and reparation legislation enacted in 1988. Even though Daniels gives first hand accounts of the internment of Japanese Americans in his book, the author is lacking adequate citations and provocative quotations. It’s

“Farewell to Manzanar” After the disastrous event of Pearl Harbor, many Japanese families were suspected of contributing to the bombing and betraying the United States. In the book, “Farewell to Manzanar”, the authors, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James Houston, portray damaging influences of WWII and its consequences by discussing Jeanne's life before and after the internment camps. As the internment camps concluded, some rights of the Japanese residents were cut which impacted their lives drastically. When Jeanne revisits Manzanar with her family, she explains how her Papa’s life had ended there, although he lived a few years after coming out of camp.

Startled by the surprise attack on their naval base at Pearl Harbor and anxious about a full-fledged Japanese attack on the United States’ West Coast, American government officials targeted all people of Japanese descent, regardless of their citizenship status, occupation, or demonstrated loyalty to the US. As my grandfather—Frank Matsuura, a nisei born in Los Angeles, California and interned in the Granada War Relocation Center (Camp Amache)—often

Upon Ichiro’s return to Seattle, he finds himself in an America that is unwelcoming and cold towards Japanese Americans, primarily to those who refused to serve in World War II. Though the book does not delve into Ichiro’s time spent in prison, and only takes place within the after effects of his imprisonment, Ichiro’s response to his mother shows that his imprisonment has continued to follow him into his home life. Though through his birth in America making him a rightful American, he feels displaced by his own citizenship, Okada writes, “I blame myself,” (Okada 17). Ichiro blames himself for answering ‘no’ to the loyalty questions. Ichiro places blame on himself for things that are beyond his control. He is obsessed with his identity being a whole of one thing, as being “half” or

and had little to none affection for Japan. To Ichiro, the U.S. was his homeland, and he should be loyal to the U.S. by joining the military. This generational gap between two different immigrant generations, Ichiro and his paranoid and controlling mother, already had the potential to create conflicts; yet the war between Japan and the U.S. intensified the tension. To Ichiro, being a No-No Boy caused by his mother’s powerful influence was destructive to him. His decision was against his will; and this decision not only destroyed his future by sending him to jail for two years, but also made him no longer a true American citizen which he used to identify himself to, because he betrayed his country. However, Ichiro was not a true Japanese either, since Japan was foreign to him in the first place. Thus, Ichiro was neither a true American nor a true Japanese; both side rejected him. Failed to gain back his bright future and seek for belonging and acceptance, Ichiro was constantly in confusion and rage. And this could be seen throughout Ichiro’s character development as he never felt peaceful or relieved, and he kept regretting about his decisions, kept questioning his self-identity and self-worth, kept punishing himself by rejecting any possible opportunities which might provide him a better future… not until his mother passed away. The quote from Ichiro’s mother revealed one of the major sources that caused Ichiro’s

Wakatsuki-Houston presents an insightful portrayal of the Japanese-American internment camp in California known as Manzanar. She describes how her life changed throughout the experience as she grew from child to young woman. She captivates the reader's attention with intermittent interviews, describing the seemingly constant turmoil that each prisoner faced.

The Japanese-American author, Julie Otsuka, wrote the book When the Emperor was Divine. She shares her relative and all Japanese Americans life story while suffering during World War II, in internment camps. She shares with us how her family lived before, during, and after the war. She also shares how the government took away six years of Japanese-American lives, falsely accusing them of helping the enemy. She explains in great detail their lives during the internment camp, the barbed wired fences, the armed guards, and the harsh temperatures. When they returned home from the war they did not know what to believe anymore. Either the Americans, which imprisoned them falsely, or the emperor who they have been told constantly not to believe, for the past six years imprisoned. Japanese-Americans endured a great setback, because of what they experienced being locked away by their own government.

Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Internment Camps

The differences in Ichiro’s family contributed to his self-hatred and seemingly lost identity. To him, he was the “emptiness between the one and the other and could see flashes of the truth that was true for his parents and the truth that was true for his brother” (Okada, 19). He did not want to be Japanese because he did not know the language and was consumed with anger and hatred towards his parents because even they weren’t any less Japanese even after living in America for thirty-five years, thus utterly rejecting America (Okada, 19). In addition, his mother’s defiance of the reality of Japan’s loss in the war and their inability to go back to Japan as she hoped for, as well as his father’s lack of control and courage only increases his desire to not be Japanese. However, Ichiro’s

The Japanese and their rabid ethnocentrism have their effect on the narrator’s family. The family is generally happy and well structured. The narrator lives with his mother, father, little sister and grandfather. As mentioned before, the narrator’s family pressures him to be better than the Japanese students. Upon returning home after being beaten, the men of the house invite him to eat with them and drink wine. This is a strong scene that is filled with the proudness of a parent for their son. Simply standing up to a

After WWII ended in 1945, xenophobia amongst the white populace, coupled with an inflexible definition of who or what represented “American-ness”, prevented Asian Americans from claiming an American identity. Alongside this exclusion, the post-war period also witnessed the assertion of American identity formed by culture and family in the Issei and Nisei community. This essay will argue that through Ichiro Yamada’s struggle to integrate, Okada’s No-No Boy represents the fracturing belief of a monoracial American identity and the cultural instability found within the narrative. John Okada’s No-No Boy adopts an allegoric strategy in order to foreground the attitudes and lives the Issei and Nisei shaped during their internment and sometimes incarceration, which continued after the war. Moreover, as the novel progresses, Okada examines characters such as Ichiro Yamada, who face the cultural conflicts and form the possibility of an “elusive insinuation of promise” of belonging in post-war America (221). Additionally, the racial slurs and violent attacks by other Japanese and non-Japanese Americans that befall him highlight the divisions within American society. A close reading for the free indirect discourse and allegory shows how John Okada uses these literary strategies to suggest the disturbance of American identity.

John Dower's War Without Mercy talks about the racial conflict in War World II towards the Japanese and how it affected the war and the reconstruction of the Pacific. “The Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor. On this, there was no dispute among contemporary observers. They were perceived as a race apart, even a species apart -- and an overpoweringly monolithic one at that. There was no Japanese counterpart to the 'good German' in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies." (8) Mostly he focused on the American atrocities than the Japanese atrocities during the Pacific war.