American Culture (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), Bd. 12. New York: Peter Lang, 2015. 261 pp. (Figures.) US$64.95, cloth. ISBN 978-3-631-65937-3.
Before approaching Thomas Girst’s erudite study of Art, Literature, and the Japanese American Internment, one should read John Okada’s No-No Boy (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2014 ed. [originally published in 1957]). No-No Boy is an eminently readable novel about the inner turmoil and self-doubt of a young, sensitive Japanese American war resister who returns home to Seattle after his release from prison following the Second World War (see book review of an earlier edition by Gordon Hirobayashi, Pacific Affairs 53, no. 1 [Spring 1980]: 176–177). Okada in No-No Boy uses fiction to reveal the diversity of opinion within the Japanese American community about the war, internment, military service, citizenship, and the United States. In his study, Thomas Girst analyzes the broad significance of Okada’s novel to the developing canon of Asian American literature as well as No-No Boy’s place within a wider world literature. Focusing on the cultural trajectory of Japanese American internment, both during and after the World War II, Girst also investigates how art, prose, and poetry emerged despite the restraints of manipulation, propaganda, and censorship.
Art, Literature and the Japanese American Internment begins with an introduction: “Japanese American Internment and the Holocaust.” One of the questions that Girst raises is “how scholarship on the arts and the Holocaust can be applied or be of use while examining artistic forms of expression revolving around the Japanese American internment camp experience” (14). He argues that artists caught in the unspeakable tragedy of the German concentration camps in the World War II were still able to demonstrate the incredible ability of people to retain their humanity. It was this basic approach, derived from the horrors of Nazi Germany, which provided guidance for Girst’s analysis of the Japanese American internment experience.
Chapter 1 is the longest, fifty-eight pages, dealing with “Artistic Expression and Internment,” and it is divided into four subsections, two of which deal with two specific artists, Isamu Noguchi and Miné Okubo, while the other two investigate “camp photography” and “prose and poetry.” Girst points out that “[a]rt in the camps was about creating harmony and aesthetic reprieve from the harsh camp environment” (36). He stresses that art “could also become a retainer for remembrance—constructed as private and individual or collective and cultural” (42). Ruth Ozeki, in her foreword to the 2014 edition of No-No Boy, quotes Okada as writing that “only in fiction can the hopes and fears and joys and sorrows of people be adequately recorded” (No-No Boy 2014 edition, Ozeki foreword, xvii).
Chapter 2 investigates “No–No Boys, Draft Resisters, and the Origins of Asian American Studies.” This provides helpful information concerning the history of No-No Boys and the resistance to the draft among Japanese American internees. It also looks at the postwar history of the struggle to establish Asian American studies at American universities. Girst contends that “it is only with this background in mind that the discovery, early reception and institutionalization of Okada’s No-No Boy can be fully comprehended” (113).
Chapter 3 looks at “John Okada, Writer and World War II Veteran.” Here, Girst provides biographical details of Okada’s life. While Okada was interned for a short time in 1942 in Minidoka camp in Idaho, he did (in sharp contrast to the protagonist in his novel) volunteer for the armed forces and saw service with the United States Air Force in the Pacific theatre and later as an interpreter for a few months with the US Occupation Forces in Japan. Returning to Seattle in 1946, he went to university, graduating in English and dramatic writing from University of Washington, receiving an MA in teaching English from Columbia University, and finally a second BA in library science from Washington University. Married with children, Okada made his living in the business world. Although he wrote a second book, it was never published and the manuscript was lost amidst the changes in family fortunes resulting from his sudden death in 1971 at the early age of forty-seven.
Chapter 4 analyzes “Reading No-No Boy as World Literature.” Girst’s close reading of No-No Boy reveals that Okada’s educational background allowed him to use a wide spectrum of European literary techniques in creating a complex multi-layered novel. Girst also draws heavily on the aesthetic values espoused by the Italian writer, Italo Calvino, and the views of Milan Kundera in regards to world literature to prove definitively that Okada’s book transcends the nationalistic and belongs to the realm of Weltliteratur.
Chapter 5 draws attention to the “Publication History, Reception and Teaching of John Okada’s No-No Boy.” Girst makes it clear that No-No Boy the book was well received when it first came out, but it just was not a commercial success. It took the emergence of Asian American studies in the years after Okada’s death before the book was widely read and appreciated. Girst follows the text with a useful selection of images that includes examples of official photographs, drawings, and cartoons that depict the Japanese American internment experience. Other photographs are related to John Okada’s life.
In his concluding chapter, Thomas Girst advocates the teaching of Asian American studies in Germany because he hopes “German thought and understanding of a future speedily headed toward a heterogeneous, globe-spanning and fragmented culture could greatly benefit and gradually begin to thrive” (210). In that respect, Art, Literature, and the Japanese American Internment provides a valuable teaching tool in a university course in Asian American studies. For the general reader, Girst has written a thoughtful and informative study which helps to illuminate the complexity of No-No Boy as a novel as well as the diversity of the Japanese American response to internment.
Hamish Ion
Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Canada
pp. 365-367