Former Malibu resident remembers forced WWII internment

A memorial marker denoting the relocation of 1,000 local residents, including former Malibu resident Amy Ioki, to the Manzanar camp during World War II, will be placed at an intersection in Venice.

Amy Ioki was a member of the only Japanese American family in Malibu-and just 16 years old-when the call came to assemble at the corner of Lincoln and Venice boulevards in Venice, Calif. It was April 1942, four months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when the United States entered the World War II stage as one of the Allied Big Three. Ioki's family, the Takahashis, was ordered to board the bus en route to the Manzanar War Relocation Authority Camp. It didn't matter that the high school junior, her two older brothers and three sisters were U.S. born; their crime was simply being Japanese.

“It was really like a concentration camp until they found out we were really harmless,” Ioki said.

Ioki, now 85, is one of the few surviving Southern California Japanese American citizens who will revisit next week, 69 years later, that fated intersection where 1,000 local residents who were removed from their homes were gathered and sent to the camp in Inyo County. The April 25 event, at 10 a.m., will be a groundbreaking for a memorial plaque to be located at the northwest corner of Venice and Lincoln. On the marker is an abbreviated synopsis of President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 that allowed the U.S. government to declare the states of California, Oregon and Washington-at the time populated with more than 120,000 Japanese people-as “militarily sensitive” due to Pearl Harbor. Another command gave those families just days to dispose of their property and possessions, essentially forcing them to drop their lives.

It was a different story before the war, when Ioki, then Amy Takahashi, wasn't ostracized in the least by her fellow Caucasian peers.

“We lived in Malibu, I never felt any prejudice,” she said. “We all went on the same bus, day in and day out, and all became good friends.”

The trek to Manzanar, cramped in a dirty, stifled bus, poked and prodded through a round of vaccinations, was a far cry from the bucolic life in Malibu, where Ioki's parents were immigrant farmers from Yokohama. Luckily, because the Takahashis were a large family, they were placed in their own barrack, Block 23.

“If you were in a small family, they were put in a room with three other families,” Ioki said.

Overall conditions were poor: food consisted of tinned rations and school for the children consisted of hardly anything conducive to learning. It would remain that way for three years, until the end of the war.

“We sat on the floor and it was cold,” Ioki said. “No books, and the teachers were very young and probably just starting. Who would come out to a place like that if you were a good teacher?”

Their Japanese culture is what kept them going. Not long after being imprisoned, the internees found some solace through gardening and the arts. Ioki would go on to work in the camp hospital, which led to her later career path of medical stenography.

“When we were in camp, you had to make a life for yourself,” Ioki said, “because there were people from all phases of life, and the Japanese are for education, they had all kinds of classes.”

Ioki missed her high school graduation. And as she remained in the prison camp, her friends back in Malibu went off to attend Santa Monica City College or UCLA. Ioki credits her parents' strong resolve as survivors for getting them through the wartime period. “I think it's still part of the Japanese not to complain,” she said. “I never heard them complain about anything. We had to pick up everything and go. They never said a word, and my father never resented that they treated us differently. He never said anything against America. That's the mentality of the Japanese.” She continued, “Our folks were brought up that way; that we do as we're told.”

Though the connections came through tragedy, Ioki said she is grateful to have bonded with so many other Japanese during her time at Manzanar, like Mae Kakehashi, Arnold Maeda and Kazumi Tatsumi.

“We actually made many friends in camp. We stayed friends for 70 years now,” she said. “I guess we all had something in common. Everybody was the same. Everybody lived in a barrack. After we were released and we'd meet another Japanese, they'd ask, ‘What camp were you in?' The conversation would start there.

An ad-hoc group, VJAMM, the Venice Japanese Memorial Marker Committee, was formed specifically to create and place the memorial at the Venice street corner. The pedestal and accompanying plaque's design of suitcases and luggage, created by artist Emily Winters, symbolize, in part, the sudden displacement of the Japanese that day in April 1942.

VJAMM member Suzanne Thompson, also a co-founder of the Venice Arts Council, said the project originated through Venice High School teacher Phyllis Hayashibara, whose students reached out to Los Angeles District 11 Council Member Bill Rosendahl. Rosendahl became interested in the project, Thompson said, and took the steps to obtain permits for the memorial's construction, and also fronted $5,000 for the project. VJAMM has also raised about $2,500, but still needs $15,000 more to cover all expenses. Both the Venice Community Housing Corporation and the arts council are overseeing the donation fund.

After being released from Manzanar, Ioki, who now lives in Mar Vista, later married and had four children, who all graduated from UCLA. Ioki's husband died last year. Ioki said the marker is special for her because it pays respect to her parents and all the Japanese mothers and fathers who were forced to uproot their families.

“I think it's a nice thing for people because they had a lot of Japanese farmers. It would be a nice thing for them all to be remembered like that,” she said. “We don't want something like this to happen again.”

Contributions toward the memorial marker can be made to the VCHC/VAC (“VJAMM” in the memo section of personal checks) and mailed to the Venice Arts Council/VJAMM, P.O. Box 993, Venice, CA 90294. More information can be obtained by calling 310.570.5419 or online at www.venicejamm.org 

Reprint from The Malibu Times; By Paul Sisolak / Special to The Malibu Times

They Call Me Moses Masaoka

Mike Masaru Masaoka (October 15, 1915–June 26, 1991) was born in Fresno, California. The family moved to Salt Lake City where Masaoka legally changed his first name to "Mike," and became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He became a champion debater and graduated in 1937 from the University of Utah in economics and political science. At the age of 25, Masaoka was named National Secretary and Field Executive of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) just before the outbreak of World War II.

Masaoka was a key player in JACL's decision to cooperate with the Japanese American internment during the war, seeing that resistance would be counterproductive and increase the tension between the Nikkei and the FDR Administration. In his position as a national spokesman he urged cooperation and opposed legal challenges to the government, advised the government on how to run the camps (thus to reduce friction between the internees and their captors). He also advocated the segregation of so‑called "troublemakers," though the War Relocation Authority cast the net more broadly than Masaoka had anticipated. The government used him as their liaison with the entire Japanese American population in the camps, although he himself was never imprisoned in a camp.

Masaoka was involved in leading the call for the formation of the Nisei 100th Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and later served as publicist for the highly-decorated volunteer units, so that the contributions (and heavy price paid) of the Japanese Americans would be known nationwide.

He later served as Technical Consultant for the 1951 film Go For Broke! which not only portrayed the heroics of the 442nd RCT and 100th Battalion, but starred several veterans of the 442nd.

Near the end of his life, Masaoka strongly implied (without directly stating) that the government had pressured him to make statements and "suggestions" to go along with their policies. In a Public Broadcasting Service interview, he said "it was a kind of a shibai . . .We were pretty desperate." Shibai is Japanese for performance or show.

In 1950 Masaoka was involved in successfully lobbying for the rights of the Issei (Japanese immigrants) to naturalize as citizens.In 1952 he worked with the ACLU to bring a case in his mother's name, Masaoka vs. the State of California, to the California State Supreme Court that was one of the two cases that overturned the Alien Land Law (Masaoka v. People , 39 Cal.2d 883). He represented the JACL as a founding member of the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, and joined Dr. Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington. With his own consulting firm, Mike Masaoka Associates, he also lobbied on behalf of American and Japanese commercial interests.

In 1972 he left JACL to become a full‑time lobbyist. His autobiography, They Call Me Moses Masaoka, written with Bill Hosokawa, was published in 1987. Associates considered the title a sign of his ego, though the title was originally bestowed derisively by political opponents during the 1940s.

Masaoka was married to Etsu Mineta Masaoka, the elder sister of Secretary of Transportation and Congressman Norman Mineta.  Masaoka died in Washington, DC in 1991.

PBS

Japanese American Youth Answer World War II’s Allegiance Question

By Christine McFadden, Correspondent
First published April 15, 2011


What would you do if you were forced to declare your allegiance to a country that betrays your constitutional rights?

When faced with the government’s loyalty questionnaire while incarcerated in Jerome, Arkansas during World War II, Roy Nakano’s parents took a bold stand.

Asked about their willingness to serve the United States and swear “unqualified allegiance” to America in question No. 28 of the infamous loyalty questionnaire, Nakano’s parents both answered that they were “undecided.” Both U.S. citizens born in Hawaii, they cited the “existing racial discrimination and prejudice” of the “unconstitutional compulsory evacuation,” as their reason, stating: “As long as I have citizenship, I wish to remain neutral.” 

As a result, Nakano’s parents and their family were transferred to Tule Lake. Once there, they took their protest a step further and both renounced their U.S. citizenship. 

“I would not have had the guts to do what they did,” said Nakano, an attorney in Southern California and one of the founders of the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations (NCRR).

It’s a question many younger Japanese Americans may not want to think about: What would you do if you were in your grandparents’ or your parents’ shoes during WWII and were asked to declare allegiance to the country that incarcerated you? 

While many teenage Yonsei say they would have asserted their rebellious intentions, under the same circumstances, they say they would ultimately stay subdued in the face of war hysteria and mass incarceration. 

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, JAs were looked upon with suspicion and forced in many ways to prove their loyalty to the U.S. Some joined a segregated unit of the U.S. Army to prove their allegiance, others took a stand, while still others renounced their American citizenship in disgust.

“Allegiance,” a new musical play about “love, loss and heroism in the backdrop of the Japanese American internment” has sparked controversy by trying to address the question of allegiance.

The musical by Jay Kuo, which aims to open in New York City next year, features a scene with an actor playing WWII JACL National Secretary Mike Masaoka, who called for JAs to be calm and cooperative with the president’s order for a mass evacuation. In a stage reading performed before an audience, which was recorded and placed on YouTube, actor Paolo Montalban said it’s “a little known fact that Masaoka worked with the U.S. government to implement the Japanese American internment.”

The scars of the allegiance question during WWII still affect the JA community today. And many say that if faced with the same circumstances, they would have done nothing different.

Joan Coe, whose mother Mary Hara was incarcerated as a young teenager at Minidoka near Twin Falls, Idaho, would not have rebelled. 

“You have to go with the flow,” said Coe, a Sansei. “You had to do it — you’re a minor. You’re a kid, and you’re going to do what your mom and dad say and you’re going to be sad about it and you’re going to be embarrassed, too. It’s humiliating.”

Hara was the youngest of seven children, born in Gresham, Oregon to Issei parents. No matter how confused, scared or angry, Coe said she would not have violated Executive Order 9066, the curfew orders, or rebelled in any way unless she felt immediately physically threatened. 

“Right now, you and I have hindsight, and you can see it’s wrong, but at that time they’re telling you it’s for your protection,” said Coe. “The government is convincing you it’s for your own good. The government tells you to go, and you go.” 

Both of Hara’s brothers served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated JA unit of the U.S., but Coe’s 16-year-old Yonsei son Alexander said he would not have made the decision to serve.

“I’d be much more likely to run away or something than to join the military division [442nd] or take it to court,” he said. 

Many Issei and Nisei often describe their wartime experience as something that could not be helped — shikata ga nai.

“I would ask my dad, ‘Why didn’t you do something about it [the internment]?’” said Connie Masuoka, a Sansei Portland JACL board member. “We would go round and round about this and then he would get mad and say there was nothing he could have done.”

“I used to think my father’s answer was a poor one, but actually it was an honest one. Would I risk going to jail or prison by breaking curfew or refusing to join the military?” she said. 

Justin Hayase, who co-founded the Japanese American Student Union at Yale, recognizes that being raised as a Yonsei “is very different from the world that my Nisei grandparents lived in.” 

“Having gone through a college environment where speaking out against injustice is encouraged, I would more than likely react more like the Korematsus and the Endos, based on my experience,” he said.

During WWII, Korematsu defied the evacuation orders and took his battle all the way to the Supreme Court. Mitsuye Endo similarly hired a lawyer to represent her legal protest against the forced evacuation.

In spite of these statements of rebellion, Hayase points out the different time periods and ultimately has a change of heart. 

“I can say this now because a precedence has already been set,” he said. “I would imagine things were much scarier 70 years ago, and JAs simply didn’t have the resources that we might utilize today in fighting against injustice.

“To be honest, I suppose if I were alive in 1942, I likely would have reacted in the same way that the majority of JAs did, which was a reaction of stoic endurance and survival,” he added.

Rachel Seeman, a 19-year-old student in California, says she could see herself rebelling inside the internment camps, although she would have been torn between wanting to show her allegiance to the U.S. and defending her Constitutional rights.

“I would have been very angry and fighting for my rights … I can’t see myself having any other choice,” she said.

Katie Nakano, a freshman at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said although she is sympathetic of her grandparents’ plight during WWII, if she were forced to answer the allegiance question at the age she is now — 18 — she would be “extremely rebellious.”

Coe, who was born in the 1950s, noted the generational differences between her generation and the youth of today.

“Kids were more compliant then, and that’s the way I am,” she said. “That’s my generation. We did as we were told.”

Today’s generational differences notwithstanding, many Yonsei would have admittedly taken the same path if they were placed in their grandparents’ shoes during the incarceration. 

“Looking back at the way my grandparents responded to the camps, I’m extremely grateful to them,” Hayase said. “They persevered through the hardship, and they didn’t let it break their spirit.”

“Their suffering was their motivation to work harder to give their grandchildren the opportunities that were taken away from them, and today I use that knowledge as my own motivation.” 

• Allegiance, the Musical
• Jerome, Interment Camp: In Their Own Words 
• Tule Lake Committee 
• Minidoka 
• Go For Broke National Educational Center 
• Korematsu vs. the United States
• Pacific Citizen

Harry Ueno: Hero to Japanese Americans in Internment Camps

Harry Ueno stood up to corrupt officials during the internment of Japanese Americans at Manzanar during World War II.    Mr. Ueno, born in Hawaii, took a job on a merchant ship as a teenager and abandoned it when it docked on the American mainland. He settled in Los Angeles, where he married and reared three sons while selling produce.

That life was interrupted in 1941 after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Mr. Ueno and his family were taken to the Manzanar internment camp, at the base of Mount Whitney, which eventually housed 10,000 men, women and children.

While working in the mess hall, Mr. Ueno realized that camp operators were selling sugar, which was intended for his fellow internees, on the wartime black market. He confronted them and was arrested for beating up JACL leader Fred Tayama. An uprising ensued for Harry's release but then turned ugly as groups of men went looking for those who they thought were spies and began beatings across the camp. But at the police station where Harry was being held, the young soldiers panicked and fired into the crowd; two young internees were killed; eleven others were wounded in the official record. (Many more were wounded however didn't go to the hospital in fear of being arrested and therefore treated themselves. That number is unknown.) For more than three years, Mr. Ueno was moved from jail to jail around the West, spending a year in solitary confinement, though he was never charged with a crime or given a hearing.

After the war, he received $15 and a train ticket to San Jose, Calif. He began a new life there, raising strawberries and cherries and retiring in 1972. His story has been included in an oral history, "Manzanar Martyr"; a documentary film by a fellow internee, Emiko Omori, "Rabbit in the Moon"; and a book about the internment, "And Justice for All."

He died at the age of 97 in December of 2004.


http://www.choosingtoparticipate.org/resources/library/rabbit-moon-documentary-memoir

A Life Lived: Her story had plenty of drama, Hollywood-style

Myrtle Goldfinger was caught in a confused cultural dichotomy: She was born in Tokyo but moved to Southern California with her Japanese parents when she was just a year old. She looked Japanese, but her attitude was pure American. She was gorgeous by many counts, but not her own, because having grown up in Hollywood in the 1930s, her idea of beauty was all-white, all-American. Even in old age, Mrs. Goldfinger wouldn't leave the house without first putting on eye makeup to make her eyes look wider, said her daughter-in-law, Danna Kostroun.

"People don't want to see Asians," she'd say in declining an invitation to attend, for example, a grandchild's music recital.

Mrs. Goldfinger married twice, and both of her husbands were white Americans. Her son, Marian University political scientist Johnny Goldfinger, recalled that when he married Kostroun, a white woman from Ithaca, N.Y., "it was the happiest day of (his mother's) life." But despite her self-doubt, Myrtle Machiko Goldfinger, who died Feb. 18 at 94, was ambitious. She could sing, and she could dance, and if she didn't have what she considered all-American beauty, she did have beauty. This she exploited.

Her father, Imahei Takaoka, was a fire-and-brimstone Christian minister, a founder of the Hollywood Japanese Independent Church. He died young of tuberculosis, leaving his family poorly fixed. It was then that Mrs. Goldfinger's drive showed itself. She went into show business, getting sporadic work as an extra at the movie studios in Hollywood. She got at least one bit part, as a maid serving tea, at the age of 16. She went into vaudeville, she and her two sisters hitting the road as the Taka Sisters. For the time, the act was somewhat risque. Mrs. Goldfinger laid it out one time (with some embarrassment) for her curious daughter-in-law. Kostroun, who has a Ph.D. in history from Duke University, teaches history at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

"They'd dance around in a sort of 'Three Little Maids' routine (from Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado"), like a traditional Japanese dance," Kostroun said, "then the band would go into some fast jazz, and they'd throw off their costumes and dance to the jazz." The sisters performed all over the country, but the biggest sensation they caused was when one of them was murdered, knifed by a jealous boyfriend. The boyfriend was white. "The newspapers played it as an East-West love triangle," a cautionary tale of "the dangers of 'exotic love,' " Kostroun said.

In 1942, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Mrs. Goldfinger and her family were among the more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans to be rounded up and put in "War Relocation Camps." Mrs. Goldfinger spent most of the war at the Manzanar camp in the California desert, about 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles. She passed the time teaching ballet to the children.

After the war, she married and had a daughter. The marriage failed, and she moved to Tokyo to take a job as an interpreter for the American occupation forces. There she met her second husband, Arthur Goldfinger, who was in Tokyo with the Air Force. They married and had a son.

The Goldfingers returned to the U.S. in 1969 and settled in Mobile, Ala. Mr. Goldfinger taught high school history; his wife did secretarial work. Mr. Goldfinger died in 2006. Mrs. Goldfinger became deeply religious, a committed Seventh-day Adventist. She lived uneasily with her own past. She came to believe it was wrong to watch movies, and here she'd been in them -- she appeared in the 1934 James Cagney vehicle "Jimmy the Gent." And the dancing. She asked her daughter-in-law not to tell her parents about the dancing.

Late in life, Mrs. Goldfinger was faced with still more drama: Hurricane Katrina. She and her husband, both 89, didn't have to evacuate, but they went weeks without electricity. They soon moved to Indianapolis to reside with their son and to live out their years here. Mrs. Goldfinger is survived by two children, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren

Will Higgins@ indystar.com

Obituary for Myrtle Goldfinger

Spies and traitors: New exhibit in Philadelphia traces their impact on our lives

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Exclusive to the National Constitution Center's showing of 'Spies, Traitors, and Saboteurs,' visitors can view glass and granite fragments from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, as well as a shoe that was recovered from the wreckage, on loan from the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. (CAROL H. FEELY, CONTRIBUTED PHOTO / March 12, 2011

Twisted pieces of metal, salvaged from planes that struck the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001 are stark testimonials to the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil in the 21^st century. But they're just one chapter of a larger story being told at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

"Spies, Traitors & Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America" details many more events and time periods in which Americans have been harmed by enemies within the country's borders. They range from a Revolutionary War plot to kidnap George Washington and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, to 1960s church bombings in the South and the Oklahoma City bombing.

The exhibition is not intended to make visitors afraid of their own shadows or suspicious of every person they meet. "We hope the exhibit will stimulate dialogue about how we can defend our country while also protecting the individual rights and freedoms that are at the heart of our democracy," says David Eisner, president and CEO of the Constitution Center.

The traveling exhibition, prepared by the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., explores stories of espionage and treason since the nation's birth and examines counter-intelligence measures that affect our daily lives.

"America changed forever on Sept. 11, 2001. The National Constitution Center is the perfect venue for a conversation about what wrenching and lasting change has come to mean to all of us," says the Spy Museum's Karen Corbin.

Those who explore the exhibition will rediscover the courage of first responders who ran toward the burning and collapsing twin towers. And they'll learn of other acts of courage in the face of terrorism, like Dolly Madison's efforts to save Washington's portrait from the burning White House when the nation's capital was under British attack in 1814.

They'll also learn of less-than-admirable moments in our history, like the internment of Japanese Americans — which was triggered when a Japanese pilot returning from the Pearl Harbor attack crash-landed on the Hawaiian island of Niihau. With the help of a Japanese American, he took hostages and terrorized a community. According to the exhibit's information, "This incident perpetuated fears about Japanese Americans that ultimately led to the unprecedented incarceration of thousands."

Visitors also will have the chance to express opinions on questions raised in the exhibition about how the nation responded to events.

Using newspaper headlines, historic photographs, artifacts and video and themed room settings, the exhibition's timeline traces more than 80 acts of terror that have taken place in the United States from 1776 to the present.

One of the most intriguing incidents detailed in the exhibit is the account of the explosion at Black Tom Island in New York Harbor on July 30, 1916. "Although it is something people have forgotten about, the explosions at the island's munitions depot — triggered by German saboteurs at the outset of World War I — were felt as far away as Philadelphia. The response to that incident was the Espionage Act of 1917 that's still on the books today," says Steve Frank, staff historian for the Constitution Center.

He adds, "Some of the threats to national security have come from abroad, but others have been homegrown."

He points to the section dealing with the Ku Klux Klan — probably America's best-known terrorist organization. The section containing graphic proof of their shocking levels of violence, maybe something visitors with young children should skip. Its evolution from vigilante groups inflicting terror on former slaves after the Civil War to its position today as one of many white supremacist groups is a thought-provoking stop for adults and teens.

The exhibition is organized in nine segments: Revolution: 1776-1890; Sabotage, 1914-1918; Hate, 1865-present; Radicalism, 1917-1920; World War, 1935-1945; Subversion, 1945-1956; Protest, 1969-1976; Extremism, 1992-Present; Terrorism, 1980-Present.

Among artifacts and presentations found in the displays:

•Glass and granite fragments from the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City and a shoe found in the wreckage.

•A ritual Ku Klux Klan red robe worn by the Klan "Kladd," who was the elected Klan officer presiding over secret rituals and ceremonies and KKK "business cards," which warned Americans that their every move was being watched.

•A badge and ID card carried in 1917 by an operative of the American Protective League who spied on fellow Americans on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department during World War I.

•A Weather Underground video presentation featuring an interview with ex-Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn.

•A replica of an anarchist's globe bomb that was presented as evidence in the 1886 trial of men tried in connection with the Chicago Haymarket riot.

There are designed "environments" too, like a militiaman's closet of weaponry and camouflage clothes, as well as a room set up like the 1950s office of an FBI agent. In the agent's office are file cabinets that can be opened to view the files kept on Americans who were suspected of being Communists, including Lucille Ball.

The beloved, red-headed comedienne apparently had registered to vote as a Communist in 1936 and again in 1938. As it turned out, she had done it only to please her grandfather. The ensuing investigation and interrogation by the House Committee for Un-American Activities failed to turn up anything more on Lucy. Observed her husband, Desi Arnaz, "The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that's not legitimate."

By Diane W. Stoneback, OF THE MORNING CALL

Roger Shimomura's “Shadows of Minidoka”

It’s easy to forget a barbed wire barrier when you weren’t behind it. Roger Shimomura, his family and more than 120,000 other Japanese were. Shimomura never forgot. “Government,” he said, “has a very, very short memory.”

Shimomura unveiled “Shadows of Minidoka” Friday night at the Lawrence Arts Center to a bustling crowd of wine sippers, art aficionados and passersby. The two-room gallery, which will be open to the public until March 12, features Shimomura’s acrylic paintings and collected artifacts. The works reflect on and resurface the two years he spent at an internment camp for Japanese Americans in Minidoka, Idaho during the second World War. “We’re looking at something more than paying lip-service to diversity and history,” said Carol Ann Carter, professor of painting and former colleague of Shimomura. The paintings rely on recurring symbols to imprint their meaning and ensure that the viewer refamiliarizes oneself with this American tragedy. “Shadow of the Enemy” depicts the silhouette of a pigtailed young girl skipping rope — the atypical villain. In most pieces, no matter the mood, barbed wire dangles around the exterior.

“The proliferation of barbed wire represents the confluence of symbolic confinement as well as actual confinement,” Shimomura said. “People are not free to live their lives as America promises is their nationalistic right.”  The most gripping evidence of injustice lies within the room of artifacts. Among other items, propoganda, government orders, newspaper clippings, camp artwork and letters on the gallery’s walls tell the story of the prisoners’ plight. 

“I have been trying to analyze the psychology of the people while calming my own resentment against some of the asinine benevolence of this benign-intentioned government and the workings of human nature in the raw,” wrote an evacuee to friends in a letter from 1942-43. Ben Ahlvers, exhibitions director of the Lawrence Arts Center who installed the art, cited the artifacts as “the cornerstone” of the exhibition. “The conglomeration of all of those parts make for a personal connection,” he said. Richard Thomas Barkosky, Haskell University freshman of Tucscon, AZ, was a youthful outlier in the mostly middle-aged gathering.

“It reminds me of comic books,” Barkosky said of the acrylic works. “It’s cartoony.” Though the lucid style of painting may oddly juxtapose such austere subjects, Shimomura is able to remove personal influence from his art. “The anger, pain and frustration,” he said, “stops when I decide what I am going to paint.”

Roger Shimorua's Website
http://www.rshim.com/

Lawrence Art Center
http://www.lawrenceartscenter.org/Exhibitions/2011/images-rs/SHIMOMURA_Gallery_Guide.pdf

This article is a reprint

http://www.kansan.com/news/2011/feb/14/shimomuras-work-brings-dark-history-light/