The Generational Divide in John Okada’s No-No Boy Anonymous College

The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II had a lasting impact on the first two generations of Japanese Americans – the Issei (the first-generation Japanese immigrants) and the Nisei (American-born children of the first-generation Japanese immigrants). It exposed, and thereby exacerbated, the conflict between the Issei and the Nisei, pitting those who remained loyal to Japan and those who saw America as their homeland. In doing so, incarceration orchestrated the experience of double consciousness, particularly for the Nisei, who did not know whether to identify as Japanese or Americans. Seattle-born Japanese American novelist John Okada reflects on these difficult identity issues faced by the second generation of Japanese Americans in his debut novel, No-No Boy. The novel is an account of a young Japanese American, a 25-year-old Nisei named Ichiro Yamada, who refuses to enlist in the war against Japan and is thereby sent to a detention camp alongside his parents. No-No Boy dwells on Ichiro after he is released from the internment camp back to his family in Seattle, during which he searches for his identity and blames his mother, an Issei, for raising him more as a Japanese than an American. As a result, Ichiro’s...