No No Girl (film)

Full-length feature film by Paul Daisuke Goodman about the long shadow of the World War II incarceration on a Southern California Nikkei family.

After the death of Michiko Hasegawa, a Nisei woman, the discovery of a cache of love letters—apparently written by a man who was not her future husband—and the suggestion that she left something buried in her box in the backyard, pique the interest of her Yonsei grandchildren and apparent dread in her Sansei children. After a chance meeting with Joan, a local singer whose music she admires, Yonsei protagonist Sue discovers that the singer's family owns the house that her family had lived in prior to the war and where the box was presumably buried. When Joan's family is uncooperative regarding the box, all the members of the family eventually work together and separately to unearth the box. Along the way, family secrets are revealed and family relationships reconfigured. While the family's wartime incarceration—as well as Michiko's husband's service in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team —is frequently mentioned, no specific camp is noted. However, one character visits the Manzanar National Historic Site and presents an offering at the memorial there.

Director Goodman grew up in Southern California and drew on his own family's history in making No No Girl , his second feature film, after Evergreen (2020). He also made the films despite battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2016. When the cancer returned in 2020, the search for a bone marrow donor had galvanized the Japanese American community and eventually led to a stem cell donation from his sister, Laurie Goodman, and to the leukemia going into remission. He finished off the script while recovering and began shooting the film in November 2021. The film premiered at the Japanese American National Museum on August 20, 2022.

"Goodman has incorporated into the fictional narrative the quotidian details, perspective and observations of growing up as a fourth-generation Japanese American in Southern California into a story that nevertheless is tied to the experiences and lore of his ancestors," wrote George Toshio Johnston in the Pacific Citizen. Similarly Akira Olivia Kumamoto of the Nichi Bei Weekly wrote that the film was "a thoughtful work of art meant to remind viewers that the past will always inform and affect the present generation."