No No Boy by John Okada pdf download

One of the Best Works of John Unfortunately I have no idea what either does. Okada, Takashi; Yonezawa, Susumu. Labaran smart boy Interdisciplinary Press - The Role of the Monster. John Okada, No-No Boy. All other assigned readings, prefaced with asterisk mark, are in the course reader, available at Cal Copy pick-up center in Holiday Dorothy Ritsuko McDonald.

When we read of Ichiro Yamada, his Tokyo: Charles Tuttle. Washington: Seattle. Get hundreds more LitCharts at www. No-No Boy eBook available to buy online at takealot. This children's book tells the story of a Japanese American boy who learns to play baseball while he and No-No Boy by John Okada. Yeah, reviewing a ebook no boy john okada thecbo could add your near friends No Boy Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies.

No-No Boy John Okada Clavell's King Rat reveal a microcosm of the world and its cultural relations in the setting of a prisoner of war camp.. Jun 11, — AbeBooks. Thumbnails Document PDF Download, 28,, No-No Boy by John Okada No-No Boy — John Okada, John Okada A classic of American noir, part murder mystery and part black comedy, set in dark No-no boy, a novel,. Rutland, Vt. Tuttle Co. John Okada's No No Boy is the Tran, Vietnamerica.. Submitted by Ellen Palms on October 15, - pm.

John Okada's No-No Americans, is no longer a place where they ought or want to be. Andrew Lam, Perfume Dreams. Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia. Internet Archive's 25th Anniversary Logo. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest.

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Hours later, someone shook him awake. It was not his mother and it was not his father. The face that looked down at him in the gloomy darkness was his brother's. It's time to eat. Then he added quickly for fear of losing him: "No, I said that before and I don't mean it the way it sounds.

We've got things to talk about. Long time since we saw each other. A fellow's got to have all the education he can get, Taro. I want in. Can't you wait? They'll come and get you soon enough.

What I did? His mother had already eaten and was watching the store. He sat opposite his brother, who wolfed down the food without looking back at him. It wasn't more than a few minutes before he rose, grabbed his jacket off a nail on the wall, and left the table. The bell tinkled and he was gone. He's never home except to eat and sleep. Mama tells him.

Makes no difference. It is the war that has made them that way. All the people say the same thing. The war and the camp life. It is hard to understand. And in his hate for that thing, he hated his brother and also his parents because they had created the thing with their eyes and hands and minds which had seen and felt and thought as Japanese for thirty-five years in an America which they rejected as thoroughly as if they had never been a day away from Japan.

That was the reason and it was difficult to believe, but it was true because he was the emptiness between the one and the other and could see flashes of the truth that was true for his parents and the truth that was true for his brother. We came to make money.

We came so we could make money and go back and buy a piece of land and be comfortable too. He went out to the store and got a fresh pack of cigarettes. His mother was washing down the vegetable stand, which stood alongside the entrance. Her thin arms swabbed the green-painted wood with sweeping, vigorous strokes. There was a power in the wiry, brown arms, a hard, blind, unreckoning force which coursed through veins of tough bamboo. When she had done her work, she carried the pail of water to the curb outside and poured it on the street.

Then she came back through the store and into the living quarters and emerged once more dressed in her coat and hat. They will wish to know that you are back. He was too stunned to voice his protest. The Kumasakas and the Ashidas were people from the same village in Japan. The three families had been very close for as long as he could recall.

Further, it was customary among the Japanese to pay ceremonious visits upon various occasions to families of close asso- ciation. Yes, he had been gone a long time, but it was such a different thing. It wasn't as if he had gone to war and returned safe and sound or had been matriculating at, some school in another city and come home with a sheepskin sum rna cum laude.

He scrabbled at the confusion in his mind for the logic of the crazy business and found no satisfaction. His father hastened out from the kitchen and Ichiro stumbled in blind fury after the woman who was only a rock of hate and fanatic stubbornness and was, there- fore, neither woman nor mother. They walked through the night and the city, a mother and son thrown together for a while longer because the family group is a stubborn one and does not easily disintegrate. The woman walked ahead and the son followed and no word passed between them.

They walked six blocks, then six more, and still another six before they turned into a three-story frame building. The Ashidas, parents and three daughters, occupied four rooms on the second floor. You have come back. Just to- day he came home. Ashida sat opposite them on a straight-backed kitchen chair and beamed. I know she is only listening to the radio. You will find many of your young friends already here.

All the people who said they would never come back to Seattle are coming back. It is almost like it was before the war. Akira-san - you went to school with him I think - he is just back from Italy, and Watanabe-san's boy came back from Japan last month.

It is so good that the war is over and everything is getting to be like it was before. He showed me all the pictures he had taken in Japan. He had many of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I told him that he must be mistaken because Japan did not lose the war as he seems to believe and that he could not have been in Japan to take pictures because, if he were in Japan, he would not have been permitted to remain alive.

He protested and yelled so that his mother had to tell him to be careful and then he tried to argue some more, but I asked him if he was ever in Japan before and could he prove that he was actually there and he said again to look at the pictures and I told him that what must really have happened was that the army only told him he was in Japan when he was someplace else, and that it was too bad he believed the propaganda. Then he got so mad his face went white and he said: 'How do you know you're you?

Tell me how you know you're you! It is not enough that they must willingly take up arms against their uncles and cousins and even brothers and sisters, but they no longer have respect for the old ones. If I had a son and he had gone , in the American army to fight Japan, I would have killed myself with shame. It is the fault of the parents. I've always said that Mr. Watanabe was a stupid man. Gambling and drinking the way he does, I am almost ashamed to call them friends. He wanted to get up and dash out into the night.

The madness of his mother was in mutual company and he felt nothing but loathing for the gentle, kindly-looking Mrs. Ashida, who sat on a fifty-cent chair from Goodwill Industries while her husband worked the night shift at a hotel, grinning and bowing for dimes and quarters from rich Americans whom he detested, and couldn't afford to take his family on a bus ride to Tacoma but was waiting and praying and hoping for the ships from Japan.

Reiko brought in a tray holding little teacups and a bowl of thin, round cookies. She was around seventeen with little bumps on her chest which the sweater didn't improve and her lips heavily lipsticked a deep red. She said "Hi" to him and did not have to say look at me, I was a kid when you saw me last but now I'm a woman with a woman's desires and a woman's eye for men like you. She set the tray on the table and gave him a smile before she left.

Her face glowed with pride. She read it eagerly, her lips moving all the time and frequently murmuring audibly. Okamoto will be eager to see this. Her husband, who goes out of the house whenever I am there, is threatening to leave her unless she gives up her nonsense about Japan. Nonsense, he calls it. He is no better than a Chinaman. This will show him. I feel so sorry for her. They only call themselves such. It is the same with the Teradas.

I no longer go to see them. The last time I was there Mr. Terada screamed at me and told me to get out. They just don't understand that Japan did not lose the war because Japan could not possibly lose. I try not to hate them but I have no course but to point them out to the authorities when the ships come.

You will come again, please, Ichiro-san? Outside, he lit a cigarette and paced restlessly until his mother came out. He followed, talking to the back of her head: "Ma, I don't want to see the Kumasakas tonight. I don't want to see anybody tonight. We'll go some other time. Business was good and people spoke of their having money, but they lived in cramped quarters above the shop because, like most of the other Japa- nese, they planned some day to return to Japan and still felt like transients even after thirty or forty years in America and the quarters above the shop seemed adequate and sensible since the arrangement was merely temporary.

That, he thought to himself, was the reason why the Japanese were still Japanese. They rushed to America with the single purpose of making a fortune which would enable them to return to their own country and live adequately.

It did not matter when they discovered that fortunes were not for the mere seeking or that their sojourns were spanning decades instead of years and it did not matter that growing families and growing bills and misfortunes and illness and low wages and just plain hard luck were constant obstacles to the realization of their dreams. But now, the Kumasakas, it seemed, had bought this house, and he was impressed. It could only mean that the Kumasakas had exchanged hope for reality and, late as it was, were finally sinking roots into the land from which they had previously sought not nourishment but only gold.

Kumasaka came to the door, a short, heavy woman who stood solidly on feet planted wide apart, like a man. She greeted them warmly but with a sadness that she would carry to the grave. When Ichiro had last seen her, her hair had been pitch black. Now it was completely white. In the living room Mr. Kumasaka, a small man with a pleasant smile, was sunk deep in an upholstered chair, reading a Japanese newspaper.

It was a comfortable room with rugs and soft furniture and lamps and end tables and pictures on recently papered walls. Kumasaka struggled out of the chair and extended a friendly hand. We like it here. Kumasaka sat next to her husband on a large, round hassock and looked at Ichiro with lonely eyes, which made him uncomfortable. If he had given his life for Japan, I could not be prouder. Ignoring him, she continued, not looking at the man but at his wife, who now sat with head bowed, her eyes emptily regarding the floral pattern of the carpet.

To sleep with a man and bear a son is nothing. To raise the child into a man one can be proud of is not play. Some of us succeed. Some, of course, must fail. It is too bad, but that is the way of life. Then, smiling, he turned to Ichiro: "I suppose you'll be going back to the university? I have im- pressed upon him the importance of a good education. With a college education, one can go far in Japan. He would have made a fine doctor. Always studying and reading, is that not so, Ichiro?

Kumasaka uttered a despairing cry and bit her trembling lips. The little man, his face a drawn mask of pity and sorrow, stammered: "Ichiro, you-no one has told you? No one's told me anything. Write about what? It was in the whiteness of the hair of the sad woman who was the mother of the boy named Bob and it was in the engaging pleasantness of the father which was not really pleasantness but a deep understanding which had emerged from resignation to a loss which only a parent knows and suffers.

And then he saw the picture on the mantel, a snapshot, enlarged many times over, of a grinning youth in uniform who had not thought to remember his parents with a formal portrait because he was not going to die and there would be worlds of time for pictures and books and other obliga- tions of the living later on.

Kumasaka startled him by shouting toward the rear of the house: "J un! Please come. Just writing a letter. Yamada and her son Ichiro. They are old family friends. The little man waited until Jun had seated himself on the end of the sofa. He's on his way home from the army and was good enough to stop by and visit us for a few days. Buddies - is that what you say?

Please, just this once more. Everybody was feeling good because there was a lot of talk about the Germans' surrendering. All the fellows were cleaning their equipment. We'd been up in the lines for a long time and everything was pretty well messed up.

When you're up there getting shot at, you don't worry much about how crummy your things get, but the minute you pull back, they got to have inspec- tion. So, we were cleaning things up. Most of us were cleaning our rifles because that's something you learn to want to do no matter how anything else looks. Bobbie was sitting beside me and he was talking about how he was going to medical school and become a doctor - ' , A sob wrenched itself free from the breast of the mother whose son was once again dying, and the snow- white head bobbed wretchedly.

Jun looked away from the mother and at the picture on the mantel. I was nodding my head and saying yeah, yeah, and then there was this noise, kind of a pinging noise right close by. It scared me for a minute and I started to cuss and said, 'Gee, that was damn close,' and looked around at Bobbie. He was slumped over with his head between his knees. I reached out to hit him, thinking he was fooling around. Then, when 1 tapped him on the arm, he fell over and 1 saw the dark spot on the side of his head where the bullet had gone through.

That was all. Ping, and he's dead. It doesn't figure, but it happened just the way I've said. And in her bottomless grief that made no distinction as to what was wrong and what was right and who was Japanese and who was not, there was no awareness of the other mother with a living son who had come to say to her you are with shame and grief because you were not Japanese and thereby killed your son but mine is big and strong and full of life because 1 did not weaken and would not let my son destroy himself uselessly and treacherously.

Ichiro's mother rose and, without a word, for no words would ever pass between them again, went out of the house which was a part of America. Kumasaka placed a hand on the rounded back of his wife, who was forever beyond consoling, and spoke gently to lchiro: "You don't have to say anything.

You are truly sorry and 1 am sorry for you. We can talk even if your mother's convictions are different. Mean and crazy. Goddamned Jap! Then he hurried out of the house which could never be his own. His mother was not waiting for him. He saw her tiny figure strutting into the shadows away from the illumi- nation of the street lights and did not attempt to catch her. As he walked up one hill and down another, not caring where and only knowing that he did not want to go horne, he was thinking about the Kumasakas and his mother and kids like Bob who died brave deaths fighting for sornething which was bigger than Japan or America or the selfish bond that strapped a son to his rnother.

Bob, and a lot of others with no more to lose or gain then he, had not found it necessary to think about whether or not to go in the army. When the time came, they knew what was right for them and they went. What had happened to him and the others who faced the judge and said: You can't make me go in the army because I'm not an American or you wouldn't have plucked me and mine from a life that was good and real and meaningful and fenced me in the desert like they do the Jews in Germany and it is a puzzle why you haven't started to liquidate us though you might as well since everything else has been destroyed.

And some said: You, Mr. Judge, who supposedly represent justice, was it a just thing to ruin a hundred thousand lives and homes and farms and businesses and dreams and hopes because the hundred thousand were a hundred thousand Japanese and you couldn't have loyal Japanese when Japan is the country you're fighting and, if so, how about the Germans and Italians that must be just as questionable as the Japanese or we wouldn't be fighting Germany and Italy'? Round them up. If you think we're the same kind of rotten Japanese that dropped the bombs on Pearl Harbor, and it's plain that you do or I wouldn't be here having to explain to you why it is that I won't go and protect sons-of-bitches like you, I say you're right and banzai three times and we'll sit the war out in a nice cell, thank you.

And then another one got up and faced the judge and said meekly: I can't go because my brother is in the Japanese army and if I go in your army and have to shoot at them because they're shooting at me, how do I know that maybe I won't kill my own brother?

I'm a good American and I like it here but you can see that it wouldn't do for me to be shooting at my own brother; even if he went back to Japan when I was two years old and couldn't know him if I saw him, it's the feeling that counts, and what can a fellow do? Besides, my mom and dad said I shouldn't and they ought to know. And after the fellow with the brother in the army of the wrong country sat down, a tall, skinny one sneered at the judge and said: I'm not going in the army because wool clothes give me one helluva bad time and them 0.

The judge, who looked Italian and had a German name, repeated the question as if the tall, skinny one hadn't said anything yet, and the tall, skinny one tried again only, this time, he was serious. He said: I got it all figured out.

Economics, that's what. I hear this guy with the stars, the general of your army that cleaned the Japs off the coast, got a million bucks for the job.

The only way it figures is the money angle. How much did they give you, judge, or aren't your fingers long enough? Cut me in. Give me a cut and I'll go fight your war single-handed. Please, judge, said the next one. I want to go in your' arrrlY because this is my country and I've always lived here and I was all-city guard and one time I wrote an essay for composition about what it means to me to be an American and the teacher sent it into a contest and they gave me twenty-five dollars, which proves that I'm a good American.

Maybe I look Japanese and my father and mother and brothers and sisters look Japanese, but we're better Americans than the regular ones because that's the way it has to be when one looks Japanese but is really a good American. We're not like the other Japanese who aren't good Americans like us.

We're more like you and the other, regular Americans. All you have to do is give us back our home and grocery store and let my kid brother be all-city like me. Nobody has to know. We can be Chinese. We'll call ourselves Chin or Yang or something like that and it'11 be the best thing you've ever done, sir. That's all, a little thing. Will you do that for one good, loyal American family?

We'll forget the two years in camp because anybody can see it was all a mistake and you didn't really mean to do it and I'm all yours. There were others with reasons just as flimsy and unreal and they had all gone to prison, where the months and years softened the unthinking bitterness and let them see the truth when it was too late.

For the one who could not go because Japan was the country of his parents' birth, there were a thousand Bobs who had gone into the army with a singleness of purpose. For each and every refusal based on sundry reasons, another thousand chose to fight for the right to continue to be Americans because homes and cars and rnoney could be regained but only if they first regained their rights as citizens, and that was everything.

And then Ichiro thought to himself: My reason was all the reasons put together. I did not go because I was weak and could not do what I should have done. It was not my mother, whom I have never really known.

It was me, myself. It is done and there can be no excuse. I remember Kenzo, whose mother was in the hospital and did not want him to go. The doctor told him that the shock might kill her. He went anyway, the very next day, because though he loved his mother he knew that she was wrong, and she did die. And I remember Harry, whose father had a million-dollar produce bus- iness, and the old man just boarded everything up because he said he'd rather let the trucks and buildings and warehouses rot than sell them for a quarter of what they were worth.

Harry didn't have to stop and think when his number came up. Then there was Mr. Yamaguchi, who was almost forty and had five girls. They would never have taken him, but he had to go and talk himself into a uniform. I remember a lot of people and a lot of things now as I walk confidently through the night over a small span of concrete which is part of the sidewalks which are part of the city which is part of the state and the country and the nation that is America.

It is for this that I meant to fight, only the meaning got lost when I needed it most badly. Then he was on Jackson Street and walking down the hill.

He recognized a face, a smile, a gesture, or a sneer, but they were not for him, for he walked on the outside and familiar faces no longer meant friends. He walked quickly, guiltily avoid- ' ing a chance recognition of himself by someone who remembered him.

Minutes later he was pounding on the door of the darkened grocery store with home in the back. It was almost twelve o'clock and he was surprised to see his father weave toward the door fully dressed and fumble with the latch. He smelled the liquor as soon as he stepped inside. He had known that his father took an occasional drink, but he'd never seen him drunk and it disturbed him. After several tries, his father flipped the latch back into place.

Your first night home. I want to put you to bed. I know how it is. It was half empty. On the table was also a bundle of letters. By the cheap, flimsy quality of the envelopes, he knew that they were from Japan. One of the letters was spread out before his father as if he might have been interrupted while perusing it. You have got to drink a little to be a man, you know. After that, it gets.

Ichiro regarded the bottle skeptically: "You drink all this? I celebrate life. I just celebrate you. You are home and is it wrong for me to be happy? Of course not. I am happy. I celebrate. We don't get rich, but we make enough. I remember you used to play Go with Mr.

Kumasaka all the time. And Ma was always making me run after you to the Tandos. You were never home before the war. You still do those things? Just as quickly, he became soberly serious. He held up the thick pile of letters.

These letters are from my brothers and cousins and nephews and people I hardly knew in Japan thirty-five years ago, and they are from your mama's brother and two sisters and cousins and friends and uncles and people she does not remember at all.

They all beg for help, for money and sugar and clothes and rice and tobacco and candy and anything at all. I read these letters and drink and cry and drink some more because my own people are suffering so much and there is nothing I can do. She says these letters are not from Japan, that they were not written by my brothers or her sisters or our uncles and nephews and nieces and cousins.

She does not read them any more. Propaganda, she says.