Dehumanization Of Internment

Okada’s “No No Boy” brings to light the issues experienced by Japanese Americans in the aftermath of internment. Although they had already been subject to racism and prejudice before the war and had endured such great paranoia and systemic racism during the war, No No Boy really deals with the aftermath of this and the continued prejudice and systemic racism that Japanese Americans still had to face after returning.
Above all, I think that the novel brings up the issue of identity: were people like Ichiro fully American or fully Japanese and how had the dehumanization of internment affected their identity? Ichiro seems to resist both of these things at various points throughout the novel. He grows distant from his family and from the community