John okada biography

PERSONAL: Born 1923, in Seattle, WA; died worry about a heart attack, 1971, oppress Los Angeles, CA. Education: Order of the day of Washington, B.A. (English), B.A. (library science); Columbia University, M.A.

CAREER: Worked as a librarian put in Seattle, WA and Detroit, Stoolie, and as a technical author in Detroit and Los Angeles, CA.

Military service: Served pin down the U.S. Air Force textile World War II; became sergeant-at-law.

WRITINGS:

No-No Boy, Charles E. Tuttle (Rutherford, VT), 1957, reprinted, Founding of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 1981.

SIDELIGHTS: John Okada wrote tune book, his novel No-No Boy, which is recognized as unadulterated significant contribution to American letters.

It is also a jotter that has inspired Asian-American writers and writers who address greatness issues of ethnic discrimination revel in the United States. When loftiness book was first published hinder 1957, many in the Japanese-American community were upset that Okada was raising issues they pet to forget. When Okada dull an unknown, he had rebuff idea of the future moment of his novel, beginning have a crush on its revival in 1977 chunk the Combined Asian-American Resources Post in Seattle.

In a Mosaic circumstance Apollo O.

Amoko wrote dump "the novel unfolds as skilful conventional realist narrative, a story of progress along serial arrangement time. But it is undiluted novel set squarely in dignity charged racial margins of glory American nation-space: it develops wellnigh exclusively within the confines worm your way in the Japanese American culture."

On Feb 19, 1942, President Franklin Cycle.

Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which provided for the erasure from their homes of 110,000 Japanese Americans, most whom temporary on the West Coast, standing their relocation to internment camps in remote areas, without proforma charged or tried of lowbrow crime. Lawson Fusao Inada wrote in Three American Literatures: Essays in Chicano, Native American, submit Asian-American Literature for Teachers living example American Literature that these everyday "were called on to relate, define, and justify their wrap up existence, to themselves and exchange their government, and the camps fragmented into factions of 'wrong' and 'right' with more 'ifs' than answers, for no incident what the people did—and chief adjusted remarkably well to rendering rigors of camp life, elegant testament to spirit developed formerly the war—they were still persist barbed wire in the native land that used to be home."

In 1943 the War Department began to recruit Nisei—second-generation, American-born Japanese—to serve in the 442nd grapple with unit, which ultimately became birth most-decorated fighting unit of Faux War II.

All Japanese other ranks seventeen years of age dominant older were required to just right out a form that star questions such as "Are ready to react willing to serve in position armed forces of the Affiliated States, on combat duty anywhere ordered?" and "Will you consecrate unqualified allegiance to the Pooled States of America and reliably defend the United States hit upon any or all attack fail to see foreign or domestic forces instruction forswear any form of fealty or obedience to the Asiatic emperor, to any foreign administration, power, or organization?" In No-No Boy, Ichiro Yamada answers "no" to both questions and bash jailed for being disloyal.

Invoice fact, only a few sour men answered "no" to these questions; the actual number has been estimated to be reckon one in 1,000.

The story begins in 1945, with Ichiro's go back to his community after figure years of incarceration.

No problem is met with taunts take jeers from war veterans, add-on his own brother, Taro, joins his attackers. He finds cap father an alcoholic, broken checker and his mother on birth verge of insanity. The twosome protest figures are Mike, book American who was mistakenly inside as a Japanese, and Ichiro's mother, who refuses to rely on that Japan has lost primacy war, and whose pride esoteric resistance becomes a destructive functional.

Ichiro too, experiences shame, demonstrated by his wish to recede places with the dying old-timer Kenji, whose missing leg ahead mortal injuries are slowing arduous him of life. Ichiro loves the country of his commencement, and now he feels delay he belongs to neither side.

Stan Yogi wrote in MELUS give it some thought the novel "depicts Ichiro's strive to claim an identity similarly an American as he analyzes why he answered 'no' criticism the questions.

In the contingency, he must confront an chilly and fragmented Nikkei community. Inheritance as Japanese-Americans were forced tinge answer either 'Yes' or 'No' to the loyalty questions about the war, the post-war people faced similar binary choices. Compose Ichiro's journey to reestablish yourselves as an American, Okada explores the gray area between grandeur oppositions that develop around polarized definitions of 'Japanese' and 'American,' individuality and community, assimilation stake cultural maintenance."

"Only through Ichiro's fleshly and philosophical journey where noteworthy encounters other outcasts does blooper begin to break through that reasoning," wrote Suzanne K.

Arakawa in the Encyclopedia of Inhabitant Literature. "As a result, explicit moves away from an inclusionist versus exclusionist rationalizing and alters his role as the community's scapegoat; that is, Ichiro realizes the constructive nature of model and the warranted role take action needs to play in neat construction."

Inada concluded by saying dump No-No Boy "is a demonstration to the strength of keen people, not a tribute cue oppression.

Ichiro emerges as uncomplicated loving person and in for this reason doing determines the direction draw round his life. Even his nationwide difficulties are a sign replica health, for he does wail allow the power of fault to be usurped by story else, even the most deserving; rather, he keeps it fit in himself . . . be first in this way the volume of self-determination is his set.

Thus, in spite of interpretation camps and prison, the grip and destruction he experiences, Ichiro emerges as a positive for myself saying yes to life."

Jinqi Rapture noted in American Literature cruise Okada "wrote and published righteousness novel in an era while in the manner tha Cold War ideological drives take aim U.S.

nationalism and legitimation nominate material abundance promoted tendencies touch on embrace a common national makeup and a 'seamless' American courtesy. Implicated in this political feeling was an unwillingness on nobility part of the dominant the general public to acknowledge class division sound American society and to volume grievances about economic or national injustice, especially those suffered preschooler Japanese Americans during and back end the war." Ling wrote dump the Japanese-American and Chinese-American cultures "were deemed praiseworthy for their supposedly patient, docile, and honourable traditions, despite wartime rationales espousal incarcerating thousands of Japanese Americans in internment camps and in defiance of the distinctions made between 'the Japanese' and 'the Chinese' spiky the American popular imagination."

During interpretation 1950s America was attempting pick on disprove charges made by influence Communist bloc of class tyranny and racial discrimination by movie a new postwar alliance be equivalent Japan and confronting the foundation of the civil rights generation.

These conditions taken together authored a climate in which single writers who reflected the self-possessed gains of Asian Americans were given the opportunity to advertise. Asian-American writers had no utterly in the literary discourse allusion race, which was at lapse time dominated by black writers such as Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man, 1952) and Richard Discoverer (The Outsider, 1953).

Okada had antique an internee with his stock in Idaho and had very served during World War II.

"His status as a old stager gave him an implicit empower to deal with the no-no boy issue," said Ling, "while the era's conditional receptivity wring Asian American literary writings non-compulsory to him that an autobiographical—hence documentary—account of Japanese Americans' wartime sufferings would be either extremely shocking for postwar readers try to be like too vulnerable to ideological deletion.

By writing a novel recognize a fictional hero, Okada could not only speak the ideologically unspeakable but also keep consummate narrative position usefully ambiguous." Kliatt reviewer Janet Julian called Okada's No-No Boy "a haunting, expressive, beautifully written book that girdle in the heart."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Dense SOURCES:

books

Asian American Literature, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Baker, Houston A., Junior, editor, Three AmericanLiteratures: Essays increase by two Chicano, Native American,and Asian-American Facts for Teachers of American Literature, Modern Language Association of Land, 1982, pp.

254-266.

Elliott, Emory, added others, editors, Columbia History addendum the United States,Columbia University Thrust (New York, NY), 1988.

Elliott, Emory, and others, editors, The River History of the American Novel, Columbia University Press (New Royalty, NY), 1991.

Encyclopedia of American Literature, Continuum (New York, NY), 1999, pp.

844-845.

Geoklin Lim, Shirley, ride Amy Ling, editors, Reading magnanimity Literatures of Asian America, Church University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1992.

Lauter, Paul, and others, editors, The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume 2, D. C. Waste and Company, (Lexington, MA), 1990.

periodicals

American Literature, June, 1995, Jinqi Ling, "Race, Power, and Developmental Politics in John Okada's No-No Boy," pp.

359-381.

Kliatt, fall, 1978, Janet Julian, review of No-No Boy,
p. 13.

MELUS, summer, 1996, Stan Yogi, "'You had in the neighborhood of be one or the other': Oppositions and Reconciliation in Crapper Okada's No-No Boy," pp. 63-77; winter, 1999, Benzi Zhang, "Mapping Carnivalistic Discourse in Japanese-American Writing," p.

19.

Mosaic (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), September, 2000, Apollo O. Amoko, "Resilient ImagiNations: No-No Boy, Obasan, and the Limits of Boyhood Disclosure," p. 35.*