Ken Narasaki's adaptation of the novel by Japanese-American author John Okada is set during the aftermath of the U.S. government's incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the resettlement of Japanese Americans to the West Coast. In the play, Ichiro returns to Seattle, where he struggles to transition into post-war life.
Recorded at The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood, in January 2021.
No-No Boy is sponsored in part by the California Civil Liberties Program from the California State Library.
Directed by Anna Lyse Erikson
Producing Director: Susan Albert Loewenberg
Kurt Kanazawa as Taro
Emily Kuroda as Mrs. Kanno and Mrs. Kumasaka
John Miyasaki as Freddie and others
Ken Narasaki as Kenji, Kumasaka-san and others
Sharon Omi as Ma
Joy Osmanski as Emi, 2A
Sab Shimono as Pa
Greg Watanabe as Ichiro
Paul Yen as Eto, Jun and others
Senior Producer: Anna Lyse Erikson
Prepared for audio by Mark Holden
Sound design by Mark Holden and Neil Wogenson
Recording Engineers: Charles Carroll and Neil Wogenson
Mixed by Charles Carroll and Mark Holden for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood
Senior Radio Producer: Ronn Lipkin
Foley Artist: Jeff Gardner
Editor: Neil Wogenson
First published in 1956, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel's importance and popularized it as one of literature's most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience.
No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life "no-no boys." Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle. As Ozeki writes, Ichiro's "obsessive, tormented" voice subverts Japanese postwar "model-minority" stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man's "threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world."