{"id":456,"date":"2017-11-05T14:02:43","date_gmt":"2017-11-05T19:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=456"},"modified":"2021-08-18T15:19:16","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T19:19:16","slug":"brotherhood-week-as-a-vehicle-for-false-american-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2017\/11\/05\/brotherhood-week-as-a-vehicle-for-false-american-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"“Brotherhood Week” as a Vehicle for False American Unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Similar to my blog post last week, I\u2019ve decided to focus back in on John Okada\u2019s No-No Boy<\/em> and a particular archival document that relates directly to the text itself and the main characters presented by Okada. Like mentioned before, the main protagonist in the story, Ichiro, has just recently returned to Seattle from being held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese during WWII, after being forced into fighting on the side of the United States while his family suffered in an internment camp. Ichiro, much like many other Japanese-American men during this time, were physically forced into participating in the war against their own country, mainly for two reasons: 1) to help America win the war through increased manpower and 2) for xenophobic fears surrounding the Japanese people residing in the US at the time. Fighting in the war served as an outlet for these xenophobic feelings that allowed a constant monitoring of these men, and an assurance of their allegiance to the US, and not Japan.<\/p>\n

In order to unite these men, and all men who were fighting for the US during WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an announcement that called for a \u201cBrotherhood Week\u201d, extending from February 19th<\/sup>-February 28th,<\/sup>, 1943. This Brotherhood Week, pictured above, called on these men to fight as one united front to maintain the freedoms that are made possible because of the longstanding fight the US has put up against the enemy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

FDR starts off by stating that \u201cwe are fighting for the right of men to live together as members of one family rather than as masters and slaves\u201d, which seems contradictory from the start. Not only are people, like Ichiro in Okada\u2019s novel, excluded from this resounding \u201cwe\u201d (which happens to be repeated three times throughout the announcement), but they are essentially positioned as the slaves forced to work \u2013 or in this case, fight \u2013 for the masters who lead this country. In the novel, Ichiro would contest the fact that he is a part of this \u201cfamily\u201d of the United States for a variety of reasons, such as that his family is being held in an interment camp while he is forced against his will to fight in a war \u2013 seemingly contradictory meanings to the word \u201cfamily\u201d, as FDR denotes.<\/p>\n

This statement goes on to call upon \u201cthe spirit of brotherhood\u201d that these men are fighting for, and ends with a seemingly empty promise to \u201cextend brotherhood earth-wide which gives hope to all the world\u201d. Again, the spirit of brotherhood that FDR talks about is contradicted directly by the troubles that Ichiro faces throughout the novel, the biggest being identity and belonging. Ichiro feels as though he doesn\u2019t belong as an American because of the terms of living he and his family are given by the government, but he also doesn\u2019t feel as though he belongs as a Japanese man because he fought against them (again, unwillingly) and he no longer physically resides there. Because of that, the way FDR ends his announcement with a call to action for brotherhood earth-wide crumbles underneath itself, for there isn\u2019t even a true brotherhood visible within the United States, as Ichiro would argue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Similar to my blog post last week, I\u2019ve decided to focus back in on John Okada\u2019s No-No Boy and a particular archival document that relates directly to the text itself and the main characters presented by Okada. Like mentioned before, the main protagonist in the story, Ichiro, has just recently returned to Seattle from being … Continue reading “Brotherhood Week” as a Vehicle for False American Unity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145910,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3037"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}