The Consequences Of Isolation In John Okada's No-No Boy

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.

The author of "Response to Executive Order 9066" builds characterization through two groups of people during world war 2. The literary analysis of the story is that Japanese-Americans are not enemies to the united states , and that they are citizens just like everyone else. The excerpt shows how the author is indifferent from the rest of society and that she is the same as any American teenage girl because , she shares the same language , interest , and hobbies as other girls. The authors tone in the "Response to Executive Order 9066" is confused because she as an individual has done nothing wrong to have these type of actions evoked on her.

officials eventually began to recruit these internees into the American army. Not only was WWII a war about political alliances and geographical sovereignty, but it was also a war about race and racial superiority throughout the world. Propagating this idea, Dower (1986) argues, “World War Two contributed immeasurably not only to a sharpened awareness of racism within the United States, but also to more radical demands and militant tactics on the part of the victims of discrimination” (War Without Mercy: p.5). In elucidating the racial motivations and fallout from WWII, Dower helps one realize the critical role that race and racial politics played during the war and are still at play in our contemporary world. An analysis of this internment process reveals how the ultimate goal of the U.S. internment of Japanese Americans and the United States’ subsequent occupation of Japan was to essentially “brainwash” the Japanese race into demonstrating allegiance to America.

John Okada’s novel “No-No Boy” explores Ichiro Yamada’s identity and his continual imprisonment through expectations of the familial and societal. Ichiro returns home to Seattle after spending two years in a Japanese internment camp and two years in prison for refusing to serve in the military during World War II. Now declared a “No no boy,” Ichiro is unable to fit within American and also feels as if he does not belong to the Japanese part of him. He is subsequently imprisoned by his hyphenated Japanese-American identity, as he believes that he cannot exist in a world where is half of two versions of himself that do not make him a whole person. The following will examine Ichiro’s halved identity

'Even with all the mental anguish and struggle, an elemental instinct bound us to this soil. Here we were born; here we wanted to live. We had tasted of its freedom and learned of its brave hopes for democracy. It was too late, much too late for us to turn back.' (Sone 124). This statement is key to understanding much of the novel, Nisei Daughter, written by Monica Sone. From one perspective, this novel is an autobiographical account of a Japanese American girl and the ways in which she constructed her own self-identity. On the other hand, the novel depicts the distinct differences and tension that formed between the Issei and Nisei generations. Moreover, it can be seen as an attempt to describe the

Although all these deaths affect Ichiro differently, each death helps him deal with not only his personal trouble but also the social issue. Especially, his mother’s death seems to resolve a lot of the problems. It liberates Ichiro’s father and allows him to follow his instincts and do as he pleases; as Ichiro puts it: “…he was a reasonable man…. He was a man of natural feelings and that, he felt, had always been the trouble with his wife. She tried to live her life and theirs according to manufactured feelings.”(189) Since the whole novels focuses on the emotional struggle to make peace with one’s identity, it is important that Ichiro’s father finally gets the liberty to feel, which he was not able to do when his wife was alive. This same rigidness is what caused the tension between her and Ichiro, for he wanted her to be flexible and feel like a woman and a

In novel No-No Boy, Japanese-American writer, John Okada, tells a story centered around the life of a young Japanese-American boy named Ichiro Yamada who was seen and treated as a “No-No boy” during/after World War II. After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States government ordered the mandatory relocation of people with Japanese ancestry regardless of their citizenships and incarcerated them in internment camps. In internment camps, Japanese Americans who refused to sign the Loyalty Oath and refused to serve in the U.S. Army were defined as “No-No’s,” and would be sent to prison. The novel discussed the continuous struggle of Japanese-American community in the racially alienated American society during that time period

They did not know the consequences of their choices on this questionnaire, and this was a great conflict for the Japanese Americans. Many had different interpretations of the questions. Many argue with one another about their answers, and their meanings of the questions. Answering yes to the second question would imply an admission of allegiance to the Japanese emperor in the past. For aliens in the United States answering yes to question 28 would mean that they would be without a country, as japan was their home country. However, answering no could result in deportation for them. Everyone was confused on what to do. The “no-no” boys were protestors to the questions 27 and 28. They were protesting the way in which they were being treated. They refused to go into the military, and were then labeled “no-no” boys. During the time when they needed to declared their loyalties, while the “no-no’s were deemed as disloyal.

The United States of America a nation known for allowing freedom, equality, justice, and most of all a chance for immigrants to attain the American dream. However, that “America” was hardly recognizable during the 1940’s when President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, ordering 120,000 Japanese Americans to be relocated to internment camps. As for the aftermath, little is known beyond the historical documents and stories from those affected. Through John Okada’s novel, No-No Boy, a closer picture of the aftermath of the internment is shown through the events of the protagonist, Ichiro. It provides a more human perspective that is filled with emotions and connections that are unattainable from an ordinary historical document.

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

Many second generation minorities from immigrant parents are driven subconsciously to conform to new culture and social norms. For foreign born parents and native born children integrating the two cultures they inhabit brings about different obstacles and experiences. In Jhumpa’s “The Namesake” the protagonist Gogol is a native born American with foreign born parents. The difference with birth location plays an important role in assimilating to a new society in a new geography. The difficulty for parents is the fact that they’ve spent a decent amount of time accustomed to a new geography, language, culture and society which makes it difficult to feel comfortable when all of that changes. For Gogol the difficulty only lies with the cultural norms imposed by his parent’s and the culture and social norms that are constantly presented in the new society.

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.

However, trying to figure out where he belongs is extremely difficult when he passes a group of African American men who have moved into the neighborhood during internment. They tease him with a chant of “Jap-boy, To-Ki-yo; Jap-boy, To-Ki-yo” (p 5), illustrating the common attitude toward the Japanese as irreversibly foreign. Ichiro is constantly faced with the conflict of trying to fit into white America. As demonstrated in If He Hollers Let Him Go, where Bob deals with the constant day to day battles of being a black man. Ichiro wrestles with his identity.

Noda also contributed to the notion where gradual assimilation is inevitable. When Noda attempts to research about the injustices that her parents experienced, she discovers that her parents “felt like an American [but] everyone else denies it” because they are racially Japanese; due to the time period where Japan was an enemy of the US which alerted the American society that the Japaneses are a threat to their unity (Noda 141). By using this anecdote, Noda expresses the feeling of being an outsider