Okada, John (1923–1971)
The eldest of three boys born to Japanese immi-
grant parents who owned a boardinghouse, Okada
was born in Seattle, Washington, and attended Bai-
ley Gatzert Elementary and Broadway High School.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1942, when Executive Order 9066 required all
citizens of Japanese origin to enter relocation and
internment camps, the Okada family was relocated
to Minidoka, a camp in a desolate area of Idaho.
Allowed to leave the camp by volunteering for mili-
tary duty, Okada entered the U.S. Air Force, serving
as a sergeant. Upon his military discharge in 1946,
Okada attended the University of Washington to
earn a B.A. in English and library science. After
receiving an M.A. in English from Columbia Uni-
versity, he worked at the Seattle Public Library, the
Detroit Public Library, and, as a technical writer, at
Chrysler Missile Operations of Sterling Township.
Okada was the first Japanese-American novel-
ist, and has been acclaimed as one of the greatest
Asian-American writers. In NO-NO BOY, his only
novel (1957), Okada relates the story of Ichiro
Yamada, a young second-generation Japanese
American who is imprisoned for refusing to sup-
port the American war effort against the Japanese.
Unable to rebel against his Japanese parents and yet
wanting desperately to belong, Ichiro suffers from
his inability to be either Japanese or American, and
his failing search to find a way to integrate the two
cultures so as to form an identity for himself.
Okada died of a heart attack in February 1971.
He had been working on a second novel. After his
death, his wife, Dorothy, offered his papers to the
Japanese American Research Project at UCLA. Ac-
cording to FRANK CHIN, who met and spoke with
Dorothy, the project directors refused the papers
and suggested that she burn them. So she did. No-
No Boy is his only surviving work of fiction.
Mary FaklerOkita, Dwight (1958– )
Poet, playwright, and screenwriter Dwight Holden
Okita was born in Chicago, where he continues
to live. His father, Fred, was a schoolteacher who
served in World War II in the 442nd Battalion,
which was made up of Japanese-American citi-
zens. In contrast, his mother, Patsy Takeyo Okita,
was interned for four years in a relocation camp
when she was a teenager.
His mother’s personality and experiences
have been an ongoing inspiration for voices and
characters in Okita’s work. When Okita asked his
mother about leaving for the internment camps,
she could not remember leaving her high school
when her family was forced to leave Fresno, Cali-
fornia, in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Har-
bor. The poem “In Response to Executive Order
9066” (1982) imagines a young high school girl
saying good-bye to her best friend who now sees
her as an enemy. More detailed memories of his
mother being interned in a camp as a teenager
are the basis of “The Nice Thing about Count-
ing Stars,” found in his 1992 collection of poetry,
Crossing with the Light.
The specific and overlapping histories of Japa-
nese Americans and his hometown Chicago are
also portrayed in Okita’s poetry. “Notes for a Poem
on Being Asian American” is set during a taxi ride
through the city. The poet looks at his cultural
identity in terms of the differences between Asian
and non-Asian Americans and then attempts to
find what they share. Looking into the eyes of his
cab driver, the post-immigrant sansei poet can see
no differences between them.
Okita’s dramatic writing also investigates the
intersection between Chicago’s urban history and
that of Asian Americans. The Salad Bowl Dance,
commissioned by the Chicago Historical Society,
looks at the aftermath of the war, when Japanese
Americans were released from relocation camps
and moved to Chicago in large numbers to restart
their lives. Under multicultural conditions, Okita
sees a crisp choreography of distinct ethnic identi-
ties tossed together, as opposed to the homogeniz-
ing notions of the melting pot or ethnic stew.
In his one-act play called Richard Speck, a
young Chinese-American woman recalls grow-
ing up a block away from where Richard Speck
killed eight female student nurses in July 1966.
The brutal murder is rewritten in the comic script
in which the young woman dreams that Speck226 Okada, John