Rondo: John Okada Returns to America and Returns to America and Returns…

Abstract

No-No Boy takes place after the Second World War. With few references to the times before and during the conflict, the novel follows the life of Ichiro Yamada as he returns to his family in Seattle after a two-year stint in the penitentiary for his double negation of the loyalty oaths administered to draft-age men in the Japanese American concentration camps. In a seemingly autobiographical Preface, the author, himself a combat veteran, relates the story of a Nisei soldier who begins to think about a friend who resisted the war. Some critics claim that this friend was Hajime Jim Akutsu, who “answered ‘no’ in the questionnaire” (Storhoff 15). Another model for this protagonist might have been Joe Nakahira, according to Muller the only resister still imprisoned when President Truman pardoned all of the Nisei draft resisters on Christmas Eve of 1947 (182). In No -No Boy, Ichiro comes home from prison after the declaration of this pardon. Most likely, Okada created a composite in order to discuss the plight of all of the no-no boys.