No-No Boy (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: John Okada
- First Published: 1957
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Historical realism
- Time of Work: The late 1940’s
- Setting: Seattle, Washington
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Racism, World War II, Asia or Asians, Pacific Northwest, Asian Americans, Japan or Japanese people, Japanese Americans
- Locales: Seattle, WA
Characters Discussed
Ichiro Yamada, a twenty-five-year-old, second-generation (“Nisei”) Japanese American. During World War II, he spent two years in an internment camp for Japanese Americans and two more years in federal prison because he chose to be a “no-no boy,” refusing to serve in the armed forces and to swear allegiance to the United States. He refused because he was angry at the U.S. government for forcing all Japanese aliens and Japanese American citizens into the camps. Throughout the novel, he struggles with his guilt about his decision not to fight in the...
[The entire page is 794 words long]
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