NO NO Boy by John Okada
... In John Okada’s The No-No Boy, Ichiro, the main character, is imprisoned for not declaring loyalty to the United States and battles with prejudice from Americans and even Japanese-Americans. ... While growing up they heard the pride-filled stories of Japan, but in their hearts they are only “half Japanese” (Okada 10). ... In The No-No Boy, Ichiro embodies the conflict that occurs between the Nisei generation and their parents, the Issei. Ichiro’s mother represents the Issei who refused to assimilate to American culture and “continued to maintain their dreams by refusing to learn how to speak or write the language of America and by living only among their own kind and by zealously avoiding long-term commitments such as the purchase of a house” (Okada 25). ... Ichiro voices the inner turmoil of the Nisei when he states, “one is not born in America and raised in America and taught in American 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” (Okada 16). ... If you replied “no” to both questions on the questionnaire you were given the name of a “no-no boy” and placed within prison. ... Okada’s tale of a “no-no boy” is set at the end of WWII, when Ichiro is released from prison where he has been serving two years for draft refusal. ... ” As he enters Seattle for the first time, he thinks, “best thing I could do would be to kill some son of a bitch and head back to prison” (Okada 1). Ichiro feels like an intruder in American society and harbors guilt for being a no-no boy. He struggles to find his identity: “I am not Japanese and I am not American” (Okada 16).