One of the major issues explored in John Okada's novel No-No Boy is the issue of free will. In general, the novel examines relations between Japanese-Americans and white Americans, and focuses especially on the image that Japanese-Americans have of themselves. The question of free will involves inevitably the question of its opposite---determinism. Are the characters in this novel free to change their attitudes and their behavior, or are they helpless victims of environmental, psychological, racial and other circumstances? Clearly, Okada is a writer who holds out hope that racial hatred and self-hatred can be reduced, if not eliminated. For him to hold out such hope, he must have some faith and some evidence that human beings are capable of making free choices which will lead to such change. At the same time, the novel is full of realistic scenes of hatred and self-hatred which make it clear that the author is not naive about the likelihood of change through the free will of human beings.
Okada introduces us to Ichiro in the context of free will. Ichiro refused to be inducted into the army: " . . . Of his own free will, he had stood before the judge and said that he would not go in the army. At the time there was no other choice for him" (Okada 1). How can it be an act of "his own free will" if he had "no other choice"? The reality, of course, is that, as Okada knows, a certain amount of free will and a certain amount of determinism are at work in conjunction in the life of any individual. If we are to hope for change, a human being must be able to exercise some freedom of choice and action, but at the same time there are severe restrictions on that free will. If the worst of self-hating racists is able to go through an experience which leads to a change of heart and the possibility of choices free from racism, then anybody can go through such a liberating experience. That is precisely the lesson that Okada wants the reader to inf...