WAR AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN YOKOHAMA, CALIFORNIA, NO-NO BOY, AND TURNING JAPANESE

Abstract

The dramatic events of WWII such as the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the literal representations of the violent opposition of Japan and America, while the treatment of Japanese Americans as an "enemy race" through the relocation exercise and the administration of loyalty questionnaires raised questions of how accepted and incorporated into America Japanese Americans really are. The historical events confronted Japanese Americans with challenges of constructing their identity in the light of the bifurcation that the war represented and the realisation that their place in the American nation was a precarious one, threatened by racial suspicion and the mutability of their citizenship rights. These challenges are taken up in Japanese American literature and as such, this thesis aims to examine how war foregrounds and functions in Japanese American literature, in ways that are specific to the community's war-time experience, giving rise to literary strategies of dealing with the issues of cultural identity. The three texts examined will cover the different Japanese American generations, as well as consider cultural identity on the levels of individual, community and nation, exploring the richness of meaning and the resonance of the trope of war in Japanese American literature.