The Importance Of Internment In John Okada's No-No Boy

     For over a century, the United States has been one of the most powerful and influential states on the globe. However, every nation has made mistakes in its past. Throughout our country’s history, certain groups have had to endure horrible injustices: the enslavement of African-Americans, the removal of Native Americans, and discrimination against immigrants, women, homosexuals, and every other minority. During World War II, the government crossed the line between defending the nation and violating human rights, when it chose to relocate Japanese residents to internment camps. The actions taken by the U.S. government against Japanese Americans and Japanese living in the

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

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

On December 7,1941 Japan raided the airbases across the islands of Pearl Harbour. The “sneak attack” targeted the United States Navy. It left 2400 army personnel dead and over a thousand Americans wounded. U.S. Navy termed it as “one of the great defining moments in history”1 President Roosevelt called it as “A Day of Infamy”. 2 As this attack shook the nation and the Japanese Americans became the immediate ‘focal point’. At that moment approximately 112,000 Persons of Japanese descent resided in coastal areas of Oregon, Washington and also in California and Arizona.3

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

The Japanese-American placement in internment camps was wrong and unconstitutional. The Japanese-American people had been living in the United States without question until the uprise of racial prejudice brought on by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Many Japanese-Americans had been born in America and lived an American life, integrated into American schools, speaking with American accents, and enjoying American culture. But, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese were suddenly seen as threats that needed to be controlled. Without any consent, these Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps with poor conditions and treated as if they were ticking time bombs themselves.

The book carries a lot of detail about the Second World War and has many descriptions and feelings during and after the war. Also in this chapter we learn about Kabuo, his Buddhism and beliefs. These beliefs say that everything has a soul and shouldn't be harmed and so he feels he carries the burden of war. The Americans didn't think about, or take into consideration the fact that the Japanese Americans would be going out to fight their own kind, people from their homeland. Kabuo feels enormous guilt about this and carried it through out his whole life.

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-American Internment was a necessary choice, made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It helped to make our nation secure during times of extreme emergency and it also helped the US government to keep their enemy under watch. “The story of how Japanese American soldiers from the war’s most highly decorated US military unit came to be there is just one part of a remarkable saga. It is also a story of one of the darkest periods in American history, one filled with hardship, sacrifice, courage, injustice, and finally, redemption. It began more than a hundred years ago” (Sandler, 2013, p. 6). At the turn of the 21st century began the immigration of the Japanese to America for various reasons, but all with one thing in mind: freedom. “We talked about America; we dreamt about America. We all had one wish – to be in America” (Sandler, 2013, p. 6). The decision by these many people was a grueling and tough decision, but they knew it would benefit them in the long run. “…like their European counterparts, they were willing to risk everything to begin life anew in what was regarded as a golden land of opportunity” (Sandler, 2013, p. 6). When they came to America, they were employed and were able to begin their new lives for the first part of it.

Ichiro Yamada’s refusal to serve in the U.S. Army presents the parental and cultural aspects that are influenced by the belief of a monoracial American identity. During the internment, the government administered a Loyalty Questionnaire to all Japanese internees. To Ichiro, this either determined his rejection or acceptance into American society. One major question was Question 27: “willing to serve whenever ordered” (10/9 Lecture). Another major question was Question 28: “swearing allegiance to the United States and forswearing allegiance to the Emperor of Japan” (10/9 Lecture). By refusing to serve in the army, American society regarded him as a disloyal American. However, in Mrs. Yamada’s eyes, his refusal affirms her pride in calling him “her son” (16). During this scene, free indirect discourse, or the “presenting of thoughts of a character as if it is from their POV via character’s ‘direct

An attitude based on partiality, this is what discrimination is defines as. When one follows a stereotype that has been practiced and followed for years this is how discrimination occurs in the society. Prejudice is what discrimination leads to. Prejudice leads to culture differences and these differences act as means for people to cover. Yoshino was strongly affected by the concept of covering and assimilation, he believed that everyone in this world covers in some or the other positive way. Yoshino has mentioned lots of examples where he was forced to cover as well as assimilate and has also mentioned some other examples where he noticed people covering. Yoshino was born and brought up in US, but he was a Japanese by ethnicity. He was forced to adapt the western way due to the majority of white. Here, majority and western way is considered as mainstream. This made him loose his originality or say his authenticity. Yoshino’s parents wanted him to retain his authenticity but contrastingly said “Be one hundred percent American in America, and one hundred percent Japanese in Japan” (Yoshino 300). He was being offered a clear-cut message from his parents that he needs to cover his identity of being a Japanese when he is in America and to cover his identity of being American by nature when he is in Japan. His parents wanted him to retain his ethnicity and to be proud of it. That is why every summer they sent him to Japanese school in Japan. They wanted

He is not only having to deal discrimination from white and African Americans but from Japanese Americans who thinks he was being un-loyal to his culture. He feared that white American will never accept him again. In the novel, he states “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” (Chapter 3, pg.49). Furthermore, Ichiro brother Taro starts to disdain him because of the decisions that he has made, but Taro is willing to go against his parents’ wishing and join the U.S Army rather than attending

This depiction provides a glimpse into the mindset of nisei before the war began. This man of Japanese ancestry, Mike, who fought for the U.S. during World War I, had never considered himself anything other than an American. Furthermore, he felt there was an obvious distinction between himself and

The Okinawans had not only lost its sovereignty to the Americans, but also its identity. As the protagonist walked through the American Army base, he encountered a maid who he assumed must work for a American family. The impression of the maid as he described when their sights crossed at each other, was, “her placid, self-possessed air gave the impression she was someone who belonged here and made me feel a vast distance between us.” (34) It would be unusual for a local resident, like the protagonist, to express his discomfort standing on his own land—Okinawa. The lack sense of belonging to its motherland from the protagonist contradicted the maid’s sense of self-possessing and belonging to Okinawa. They are both Okinawans, yet there’s a vast