Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,183

This is the grave of John Okada.

Born in 1923 in Seattle, Okada grew up in the Japanese-American community there. It was pretty big. But west coast whites were among our most racist whites. From the moment the Chinese arrived in 1849–often before white Americans–whites in the region were furious about the sheer existence of Asians. So the history of the West is filled with anti-Asian violence. The Japanese really entered the picture after the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Employers looked to recruit different Asians and the Japanese were there and ready to move. So between 1882 and 1907, there was a significant migration out of Japan that led to more rounds of violence until the Gentlemen’s Agreement between the two nations largely ended migration, which both governments wanted since the Japanese were becoming an industrial power and wanted to keep it workers at home. But large communities of Japanese remained on the West Coast, some in cities, some successfully farming. Whites hated them, by and large.

Okada was a good student and enrolled at the University of Washington. Then, in 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. responded by placing everyone of Japanese descent on the West Coast in concentration camps, creating the great irony of fighting the most notorious racialized concentration camps in history in part by creating our own racialized concentration camps. John Okada, like so many other good, loyal Americans of Japanese descent–people had never even been to Japan–were rounded up, placed in train cars, and sent to isolated concentration camps. In his case, it was Minidoka, in Idaho, home to some serious labor resistance to the work regimes the U.S. military placed on them.

Now, there was a way out of the camps for young men and that was to join the military. Okada had to pass a loyalty test, but the Army really did want a lot of these Japanese American kids. They were largely willing participants, to get out of the camps and to prove themselves as Americans. Of course, the military wasn’t going to send them to the Pacific, can’t trust those slant-eyed little rats after all, no they can go and fight with German-Americans and Italian-Americans in Europe so those good Europeans would be loyal to their nation. Maybe the Japanese could learn something from them. But there were a very tiny number of exceptions to this rule and one was Okada. He joined the Army Air Force and was actually one of the very rare Japanese-Americans to in fact serve in the Pacific because he was fluent in Japanese. So he was used as a translator of intercepted communications from the Japanese. I wonder how much more intense the background investigation was for him.

But this experience did not exactly leave Okada a happy camper. He knew very well how the war had torn apart Japanese American life and the Japanese American community. He took the loyalty oath, sure, but he understood those who refused. And many of those who refused didn’t so because they cared one whit about the Emperor of Japan but because Fuck the United States for treating me this way. I can very much sympathize with this.

Meanwhile, Okada had to support himself after the war. He reenrolled at the University of Washington, dealing with what was no doubt a lot of racism from whites. I remember old white men saying the worst possible things about Japanese people well into the 1990s. Had to be tough to be on the West Coast–one of the most racist parts of the nation at this time–in 1946. But he got a degree in literature and then a second in library science. He went to Columbia for a master’s degree in English. He supported himself as a librarian and technical writer while he wrote in his free time.

In 1957, Okada published his debut novel. No-No Boy is one of the best novels in this nation’s history. It tells the story of one of the Japanese Americans who refused to give their loyalty to the U.S. in the camps, not for political reasons but because Fuck the U.S. for this. After the war, kids like this were largely shunned by the Japanese community, who largely wanted to forget. A character like this was a reminder. So he is confused (including by his own actions), gets in fights, struggles to understand what place he has in the world. His mother, who supported the Japanese, is proud of him. His father is a drunk due to his mother. He doesn’t know what to think or what to do. It’s a great novel of identity and belonging.

No-No Boy completely bombed. The Japanese community did not want to read this. White Americans didn’t even hear about it. The initial printing of 1,500 copies did not sell out before Okada died. So he just went back to his life and wrote a bunch of stuff that didn’t get published. Then, in 1971, he died of a heart attack. He was 47 years old.

Okada’s widow, Dorothy, offered his papers to UCLA’s archives at the very time that Americans started taking an interest in Asian-American literature. It was the 70s and the ethnic studies movements were on the rise. UCLA declined them. So she burned everything, including the draft of his basically completed second novel. Shortly after that, students interested in Okada because they were looking for writers who looked like them showed up at her door and she had to tell them that she had burned it all. It tore her up. Evidently, she was devastated by this and a really nice woman.

It’s really a huge tragedy of American literature. That did not stop No-No Boy from being seen as a great book of American literature. Scholars have since put together what they could of Okada’s other writings. There’s a poem he wrote on December 7, 1941, after hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor titled “I Must Be Strong.” a few short stories, a play about the U.S. occupation of Japan, and a couple of satirical pieces about the military-industrial complex, a topic about which Okada knew well since in the late 50s he worked as a technical writer at the Hughes Aircraft Company. So there’s a little bit. But still. And what if No-No Boy had been read at the time? What could have come of an Okada who did not have to work except at his writing.

In conclusion, if you haven’t read No-No Boy, do so.

John Okada is buried in Evergreen-Washelli Memorial Park, Seattle, Washington.

If you would like this series to visit other Asian-American writers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, author of Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Internment Camps, is in Vashon, Washington. Gyo Fujikawa, the children’s book author of Babies and Baby Animals, among other books and one of the first children’s books writers to emphasize multicultural images of kids, is in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.