Kenji Character Analysis

Kenji’s relationship with his father demonstrated a dramatically different atmosphere and bond in the family, which made Kenji a more mature and less aggressive person than Ichiro was in his character development. For instance, when Kenji went to visit his father, his father thought to himself that in the beginning, he did not care about the U.S. when he first came to this country, but this country “suddenly begun to become a part of him because it was a part of his children” (Okada 120). Kenji’s family shared very similar situation as Ichiro’s family, yet the parent-child relationship was drastically different from Ichiro’s. Kenji’s father, although could not fully understand Kenji’s decision of joining the U.S. Army, he was very aware of …show more content…
For example, in the novel, Kenji’s father thought to himself about why Kenji had to volunteer for the army, “[it] was because he was a Japanese son of Japanese parents [...] and, at the same time, had to prove to the world that he was not Japanese” (Okada 120-121). Although Kenji was American-born, and thus, should be an American citizen, he still had to risk his life to join the U.S. Army in order to prove that he was American enough, whereas white Americans did not have to do anything additional to prove their loyalty to enjoy their basic citizen rights. Kenji’s family tried to “Americanize” themselves to be able to live a little more comfortable life by slowly rejecting and erasing their own Japanese heritage. To the mainstream society, Japanese Americans were not “Americans,” because they were “non-white,” even “non-black.” They were foreign no matter their citizenship status; in fact, even if they were American citizens, their citizen rights could be revoked at any time as Japanese Americans were incarcerated since the “real” domestic American citizens saw them as a threat. The way Kenji’s family tried to imitate the behavior of native-born Americans was an example of the process of assimilation; it was a survival method for Japanese-American community to maintain their basic rights. As mentioned earlier, even many Japanese Americans attempted to treat badly to those who were not “Americanized” Japanese to desperately show that they were superior and thus should be qualified to be “real” American citizens. However, no matter how hard Japanese Americans tried, they could never gain equal opportunities as white citizens could access. Citizenship was exclusive to domestic white Americans, and rejected “foreign” minority citizens