All I Asking for is My Body

All I Asking for Is My Body is a novel written by Milton Murayama. It was originally published by The Supa Press in San Francisco in 1975 and rereleased by the University of Hawaii Press in 1988.^[1] All I Asking for Is My Body won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation in 1980.^[2] A theatrical adaptation of All I Asking for Is My Body was performed in San Francisco and Honolulu in 1989 and 1999 respectively.^[3][4][5]

Kiyoshi (Kiyo) Oyama lives in Pepelau, Hawaii with his four siblings and his parents. Kiyo and his two friends, Mitsunobu Kato (Mit) and Nobuyuki Asakatsu (Skats) recently have been playing with Makot, an older kid ostracized from the rest of his age group and he has become their gang leader. Makot frequently invites Mit, Skats, and Kiyo to lunch at his home where he and his family are the only Japanese people living in a Filipino camp in Pepelau. Kiyo's parents tell him he isn't allowed to eat with Makot anymore because people will make assumptions about their family and Kiyo agrees.

Later when the boys want to make extra money, Makot suggests they sell mangos and coconuts that they've stolen. After they are caught, Kiyo is told by his father he is no longer allowed to see Makot. When Kiyoshi goes to Makot's house to end their friendship, he sees Makot's mother in unusual clothes not realizing she is a prostitute.

Kiyo's mother becomes sick after getting all of her teeth pulled at the dentist. She believes that if she dies it will be as a substitute for a past family member's misdeeds.

Obaban is the family black sheep but also the closest family member to Kiyo's mother. Since he is worried, Kiyo takes a taxi to Kahana to bring Obaban back to mother. He asks Obaban if she believes mother is being punished as a substitute and she says that if that's the case, someone could just as easily be her substitute as well. Very soon after she leaves, Obaban has a stroke and passes away. Kiyo believes she was his mother's substitute as his mother is now feeling better.

Kiyo's parents have another baby and his father quits his job as a fisherman to move their family to Kahana living in a sugarcane plantation. Kiyo and his older brother Toshio (Tosh) are forced to quit school and work in the cane fields to help the family like their father did when he was younger. Kiyoshi's parents gave much of their income to his paternal grandfather when they first immigrated to Hawaii to pay their "filial duty" to him. Because of this, their family is now in six thousand dollars of debt that their parents expect to be paid off by Tosh and Kiyo as their filial obligation to them. The large debt results in tension between Toshio and his parents because Tosh argues that his grandfather stole the money from his parents and it shouldn't be his and Kiyo's responsibility to help them.

Both Tosh and Kiyo start boxing in matches around the island and in Honolulu. Tosh eventually is offered the chance to box professionally but turns it down to continue fulfilling his filial obligations to his family. When Tosh gets married he gives one third of his earnings to his parents and all of his wife's earnings to them for the first year.

After Pearl Harbor, Kiyo has the opportunity to join the Army, using it as a way to make money for is family and a way out of the plantation. In the barracks, Kiyo sees the men gambling and devises the best strategy to win at craps. The novel ends with Kiyoshi winning enough money to pay off his family's debts in the barracks and sending it to Tosh.

Murayama's novel was praised for its depiction of Japanese Americans living in the Hawaiian plantation system and his use of language throughout the novel.^[1] All I Asking for uses a mix of pidgin and traditional Japanese, English, pidgin English, and Hawaiian English Creole to differentiate environments and illustrate character relationships.^[1][6] All I Asking for Is My Body is also celebrated for telling the story of a Japanese American family living in Hawaii on the cusp and during World War II and for how it addresses the pressures of being a young Japanese American during that time.^[7]