ETHNIC AND RACIAL MINORITIES Discussion
lmjlm_redrose
Japanese-AmericanNo-NoBoysExplained.docxPsst Psst. Don't forget to think about contemporary movements that are connected to the same struggle the No No Boys were engaged in. Think about the themes they were faced with. How is their plight relevant today? Don't ignore the essential questions. Watch the video while keeping the questions in mind.
Japanese-American No-No Boys Explained
by Nadra Kareem Nittle (Links to an external site.)
To understand who the No-No Boys were, it’s first necessary to understand the events of World War II. The United States government’s decision to place more than 110,000 individuals of Japanese origin into internment camps (Links to an external site.) without cause during the war marks one of the most disgraceful chapters in American history. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, nearly three months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor (Links to an external site.) .
At the time, the federal government argued that separating Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans from their homes and livelihoods was a necessity because such people posed a national security threat, as they were supposedly likely to conspire with the Japanese empire to plan additional attacks on the U.S. Today historians agree that racism and xenophobia (Links to an external site.) against people of Japanese ancestry following the Pearl Harbor attack prompted the executive order. After all, the United States was also at odds with Germany and Italy during World War II, but the federal government did not order mass internment of Americans of German and Italian origin.
Unfortunately, the federal government’s egregious actions did not end with the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans. After depriving these Americans of their civil rights, the government then asked them to fight for the country. While some agreed in hopes of proving their loyalty to the U.S., others refused. They were known as No-No Boys. Vilified at the time for their decision, today No-No Boys are largely viewed as heroes for standing up to a government that deprived them of their freedom.
A Survey Tests Loyalty
The No-No Boys received their name by answering no to two questions on a survey given to Japanese Americans forced into concentration camps.
Question #27 asked: “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?”
Question #28 asked: “Will you swear unqualified allegiances to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or other foreign government, power or organization?”
Outraged that the U.S. government demanded that they vow loyalty to the country after flagrantly violating their civil liberties, some Japanese Americans refused to enlist in the armed forces. Frank Emi, an internee at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming, was one such young man. Angered that his rights had been trampled on, Emi and a half-dozen other Heart Mountain internees formed the Fair Play Committee (FPC) after receiving draft notices. The FPC declared in March 1944:
“We, the members of the FPC, are not afraid to go to war. We are not afraid to risk our lives for our country. We would gladly sacrifice our lives to protect and uphold the principles and ideals of our country as set forth in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, for on its inviolability depends the freedom, liberty, justice, and protection of all people, including Japanese Americans and all other minority groups. But have we been given such freedom, such liberty, such justice, such protection? NO!”
Punished for Standing Up
For refusing to serve, Emi, his fellow FPC participants, and more than 300 internees at 10 camps were prosecuted. Emi served 18 months in a federal penitentiary in Kansas. The bulk of No-No Boys faced three-year sentences in a federal penitentiary. In addition to felony convictions, internees who refused to serve in the military faced a backlash in Japanese American communities. For example, leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League characterized draft resisters as disloyal cowards and blamed them for giving the American public the idea that Japanese Americans were unpatriotic.
President Harry Truman (Links to an external site.) pardoned all of the wartime draft resisters in December 1947. As a result, the criminal records of the young Japanese American men who refused to serve in the military were cleared.
Watch the following video of an interview from an actual No-No Boy
