Question 27: Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?
Question 28: Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attacks by foreign and domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or disobedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?
In one of the more shameful episodes of American history, roughly 120,000 people of Japanese descent, about 2/3 of whom were American citizens (the rest being Japanese immigrants who were at the time forbidden by law from becoming citizens), were forced into concentration camps on U.S. soil over the course of 1942, out of a misguided fear that they might act against the country's interests and be secretly working for the Japanese military. While these camps weren't anything remotely like the horrors of the camps seen in Europe, they were still a traumatic experience for the Japanese-American population, unlike anything seen by German- or Italian-Americans.
In 1943, a questionnaire was circulated among the U.S. citizens in the camps, ostensibly trying to judge how "American" or "Japanese" they were, labelled as an "Application for Leave Clearance". The first three pages of this questionnaire were much like a combination of a Census form and a job or college application, asking for identifying information, relatives, where they had lived, education, work experience, and foreign language skills. The true nature of the form only starts to become clear with the last question of the third page, asking about any foreign investments; the last page starts out seeming fairly innocent, but after asking about contributions to community organizations and magazine readership, suddenly veers into asking if the person filling it out has Japanese citizenship, if they have applied to cancel said citizenship, and then ended with the two questions I opened this piece with.
Most of those who filled out the questionnaire answered "yes" to both questions. Those who didn't, whether because a 'yes' to 27 might mean they could be fighting their own relatives in the Pacific theater, because they thought a 'yes' to 28 implied that they had previously held foreign allegiances, or even because they were just plain angry that a government that was treating them like criminals would ask them to show it any loyalty, were further segregated from the others and sent to an entirely separate camp, Tule Lake, for the more "troublesome" inmates. Referred to as "no-no boys", hey faced a similar degree of ostracization after the war to those who had refused to join the military when called for the draft.
This serves as the historical background for John Okada's 1957 novel, No-No Boy. While some of the details are inaccurate (the protagonist, Ichiro Yamada, was incarcerated for refusing the draft, which would not have happened in real life if he had answered "No" to both questions), the essential situation is the same: Ichiro has just returned home to Seattle after being let out of his imprisonment at the end of the war, and immediately encounters the accusations of disloyalty and treason that the community levels toward those who didn't join the war effort. He wasn't actually a "no-no", more a "no-yes", but he was sent to Tule Lake, all the same.
He comes home to a mother who is completely unable to believe that Japan lost the war; she's so sure that Japan is superior that all evidence to the contrary, including letters from family in Japan asking for aid, is just a hoax perpetrated by the American government. Any day now, the ships will arrive to bring the loyal Japanese who never doubted the cause back home where they will be celebrated, and she knows it's true because she got a letter from Brazil telling her as much.
...yes, this is something that actually happened. A lot of people, especially in Brazil, lost everything they had because of this particular hoax.
Mrs. Yamada is an interesting character. She's depicted as someone who is so devoted to the idea of making money so she can go back to Japan and live well in her old age that she is completely unable to assimilate into American culture, doing her best to prevent any aspect of it from entering her house. No radio, no television, the one time that a young Ichiro borrowed a phonograph ended with her utterly destroying the device. She is completely unable to see why her children, who are barely able to speak Japanese, might want to remain in America.
Ichiro's father, on the other hand, is much more of a realist. He knows that original goal is long last being possible, that the war is over, that Japan lost. He's decidedly henpecked, however, and can't do anything without Mrs. Yamada's approval. He reads the letters asking for food and clothing but can do nothing to help, because she is so convinced that they are fabrications to help the American government steal from them.
The last member of Ichiro's family is Taro, his days-from-being-18-year-old younger brother. We don't see much of Taro; he resents Ichiro, and has already decided that as soon as he is of age, he's going to drop out of school and go join the army, because his brother wouldn't.
Ichiro's homecoming drops him right into the middle of all of this. He's one of the last to return after the war, so he falls into a situation where all the resentment of the "no-no boys" is at its height, while his mother is proud of him for "doing the right thing" and eagerly wants to show him off to all the other Japanese families, while he is struggling with what he feels is an unforgivable crime against his home.
From there, Ichiro moves about his neighborhood in Seattle, meeting back up with friends from before, friends from the prison camp he spent the previous two years in, and, well... People who hate him for what he did, without any understanding of the thought processes that led to the choice.
One of the voices of reason in all of this is Kenji, a friend who did go to war, and lost his leg, though the wound has never healed properly, and they keep having to remove more and more of it. Kenji is the first character we meet who really treats Ichiro well; he understands the pressures that complicated Ichiro's decision, and a recurring thread in their conversations through the book is which one of them has it worse.
The biggest impetus for the plotline ends up being Taro's decision to leave on the evening of his birthday to join up. This devastates his mother, still holding on to the hope that Japan actually won the war; Ichiro can't deal with it and goes out drinking with Kenji. Unfortunately, the club they go to also serves minors, and it's where Taro has gone to party with his fellow new enlists. This leads to Taro luring Ichiro into an ambush, albeit one ended by Kenji's intervention.
While all this is going on, a letter from Japan for Mrs. Yamada arrives, from her sister, attempting to make clear the urgency by relating a secret from her past that nobody else would know. This is devastating for her; she goes into a sort of fugue state, enough that when Ichiro leaves to go with Kenji to the VFW hospital in Portland, she barely notices.
In Portland, while Kenji is in the hospital, Ichiro starts to look for work that would get him away from the people who know his shame; it slowly starts to dawn on him that his actions are no less unforgivable than those of his country toward him. Kenji outright tells him that it's going to get better, that the issues are because the returning soldiers are angry that the same old racism is still present and want someone to blame, that Ichiro needs to go home and face his issues head-on.
Ichiro's return is rather unfortunately timed; he arrives in the midst of a series of tragedies. Even in the middle of all of this, though, Ichiro is able to start healing himself, finally. The tragedies of the past and present come together to give him sufficient perspective to see a way forward, and he seizes it. There's the potential for him to return to school, a possible romance, and reconciliation with his father, who is finally able to start assimilating into American culture. Not everything is perfect, and it's impossible to escape the racism that underpins everything in this country, but there's hope, and he ends the book having come to terms with himself, even if that point hasn't quite come for all of those around him. There's a glimmer of hope, even if he's going to have to work to reach it.
There are a lot of parallels that can be seen between this book and current events. Let's face it, people clinging to their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is how we get things like the events of January 6, and one of the Supreme Court cases that were litigated in the 1940s over the legality of the concentration camps was just overturned in the last few years... Ironically, in the same decision that upheld the Trump-era bans on Muslim travel. Immigrant families are being rounded up at the borders and shoved into detention centers on a regular basis, and work is only just beginning to reunite families that were forcibly separated in those locations. The underlying injustices involved in No-No Boy are still here, still happening, just with different skin colors and terminology.
If we don't learn from the past, we can't overcome it. It would be nice if those in power could learn that.
A final note on this: I learned after picking up this book that there was some significant controversy over its Penguin Classics edition; apparently, arguing that the book was in the public domain because it was originally published in Japan, and ignoring a later copyright established in the 1970s, Penguin decided to publish it without notifying John Okada's family or paying any royalties. They quickly backpedaled after the story blew up on social media, and ceased marketing it in under a month, though it can be found on their website.
My copy was purchased used, so Penguin didn't see any money from it, but I'm going to make the rare assertion that in this case, the Penguin edition is absolutely not the correct way to go. If you're going to read this book, buy the University of Washington Press edition, instead; that one pays the royalties properly.
No comments:
Post a Comment