“And when one is feeling gay and full of joy, the saké must be brought out to lift the spirits higher. And they drank, your papa and mine and the mayor's brother, and I only a little because I was even happier than they and needed no false joy.” JoyDrinking Book:No-No Boy Source: No-No Boy
“This is the way it ought to be, he thought to himself, to be able to dance with a girl you like and really get a kick out of it because everything’ on an even keel and one’s worries are of the usual ones of unpaid bills and sickness in the family and being late to work too often. Wh can’t it be that way for me? Nobody’s looking twice at us. Nobody’s asking me where I was during the war or what the hell I am doing back on the coast. There’s no trouble to be had without looking for it. Everything’s the same, just as it used to be. No bad feelings except for those that have always been and probably always will. It’s a matter of attitude. Mine needs changing. I’ve got to love the world the way I used to. I’ve got to love it and the people so I’ll feel good, and feeling good will make life worthwhile. There’s no point in crying about what’s done. There’s a place for me and Emi and Freddie here on the dance floor and out there in the hustle of things if we’ll let it be that way. I’ve been fighting it and hating it and letting my bitterness against myself and Ma and Pa and even Taro throw the whole universe out of perspective. I want only to go on living and be happy. I’ve only to let myself do so.” AcceptanceForgivenessShameGuiltJapanese AmericanNisseiIssei Book:No-No Boy Source: No-No Boy
“Filthy-minded old bastard,' he muttered viciously under his breath. No wonder the world such a rotten place, rotten and filthy and cheap and smelly. Where is that place they talk of and paint nice pictures of and described in all the homey magazines? Where is that place with the clean, white cottages surrounding the new, red brick church with the clean, white steeple, were the families all have two children, one boy and one girl, and a shiny new car in the garage and a dog and a cat and life is like living in the land of the happily-ever-after? Surely it must be around here someplace, someplace in America. Or is it just that it's not for me? Maybe I dealt myself out, but what about that young kid on Burnside who was in the army and found it wasn't enough so that he has to keep proving to everyone who comes in for a cup of coffee that he was fighting for his country like the button on his shirt says he did because the army didn't do anything about his face to make him look more American? And what about the poor niggers on Jackson Street who can't find anything better to do than spit on the sidewalk and show me the way to Tokyo? They're on the outside looking in, just like that kid and just like me and just like everybody else I’ve ever seen or known. Even Mr. Carrick. Why isn't he in? Why is he on the outside squandering his goodness on outcasts like me? Maybe the answer is that there is no in. Maybe the whole damn country is pushing and shoving and screaming to get into some place that doesn't exist, because they don't know that the outside could be the inside if only they would stop all this pushing and shoving and screaming, and they haven't got enough sense to realise that. That makes sense. I've got the answer all figured out, simple and neat, and sensible.” RacismAmerican DreamDissillusionment Book:No-No Boy Source: No-No Boy
“Dead. He thought to himself, all dead. For me, you have been dead a long time, as long as I can remember. You, who gave a life to me and to Taro and tried to make us conform to a mold which never existed for us because we never knew of it, were never alive to us in the way that other sons and daughters know and feel and see their parents. But you made so many mistakes. It was a mistake to have ever left Japan. It was a mistake to leave Japan and to come to America and to have two sons and it was a mistake to think that you could keep us completely Japanese in a country such as America. With me, you almost succeeded, or so it seemed. Sometimes I think it would have been better had you fully succeeded. You would have been happy and so might I have known a sense of completeness. But the mistakes you made were numerous enough and big enough so that they, in turn, made inevitable my mistake. I have had much time to feel sorry for myself. Suddenly I feel sorry for you. Not sorry that you are dead, but sorry for the happiness you have not known. So, now you are free. Go back quickly. Go to the Japan that you so long remembered and loved, and be happy.” MotherhoodMother And SonFirst Generation ImmigrantSecond Generation Immigrant Book:No-No Boy Source: No-No Boy
“No, he said to himself as he watched her part the curtains and start into the store. There was a time when I was your son, there was a time that I no longer remember when you used to smile a mother’s smile and tell me stories about gallant and fierce warriors who protected their lords with blades of shining steel, and about the old woman who found the peach in the stream and took it home, and when her husband split it in half, a husky little boy tumbled out to fill their hearts with boundless joy. I was that lad and the peach, and you were the old woman. And we were Japanese with Japanese feelings and Japanese pride, and Japanese thoughts, because it was alright then to be Japanese and feel and think all the things that Japanese do even if we lived in America. Then there came a time when I was only half Japanese, because one is not born in America and raised in America and taught in America, and one does not speak and swear and drink and smoke and play and fight and see and hear in America among Americans in American streets and houses without becoming American and loving it. But I did not love enough – for you were still half my mother, and that was thereby still half Japanese, and when the war came and they told me to fight for America I was not strong enough to fight you, and I was not strong enough to fight the bitterness which made the half me which was you bigger than the half me which was America. And really the whole of me that I could not see or feel - now that I know the truth when it is late - and the of half me which was you is no longer there. I am only half of me, and the half that remains is American by law because the government was wise and strong enough to know why it was that I could not fight for America, and did not strip me of my birthright. But it is not enough to be only half an American and know that it is an empty half. I am not your son. And I am not Japanese. And I am not American.” WwiiSeattleJapanese InternmentNisseiIsseiMinidokaJapanese American LiteratureRefusal To Fight In Wwii Book:No-No Boy Source: No-No Boy