No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro, a Japanese-American young man from Seattle, after he is let out of prison at the end of World War II. Before the war started he was in college studying to be an engineer, but when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, he was sent to a series of Japanese internment camps for two years. At that point, he and many other young male Japanese-Americans were asked two questions by the US government: would they swear allegiance to the United States, and would they serve in the US armed forces. Those, like Ichiro, who answered no to both questions were sent to jail for an additional two years and became known as No-No Boys.
This book portrays what it was like for these resisters when they returned home and faced discrimination for their choice. He is surrounded by a Japanese community that is trying to fit back into American life and does not want to dwell on the unjust treatment they received during the war. And yet his No-No status does not allow him to put the past behind him. He needs to come to terms with it. Which is what he does in this book.
Originally published in 1957 No-No Boy was ignored by a country that did not want to come to terms with the injustice of the internment and its effect on the Japanese-American community. Only later in the 1970s did people start to take notice, leading to its republication in 1976. It has been in print ever since and is a seminal work on the Japanese-American internment and its effects on the people of Japanese heritage living on the West Coast. I bought my copy of this book during a visit to Seattle's Wing Luke Museum, which is dedicated to preserving Asian-American art and history.
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