Interviews

1. Growing up "American"

2. Getting an English Name

3. Losing his sister in camp

4. Introduction to Film

5. Seagulls

6. Leaving Tule Lake

7. Getting Started in Animation

8. First Short Film

9. Teaching English in Japan

10. Animations for the Government

11. The Red Baron

12. Paintings reflecting on camp

13. Reparations

Murakami,Jimmy

(1933 – 2014) Japanese American animator

Growing up "American"

I mean, well as soon as we started school I was an American. I was... we did the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and everything was American. Well I mean the Japanese obviously part of it was mainly my father's side. We used to go to the church in San Jose and that was our religion. But we were... even if it were an isolated community and living on a farm on your own...We were Americans, yeah. And I made friends in grammar school. And we, you know, and we never sort of like did anything together because I was always working.

But yeah, it was when I was in Sacramento... The only time I feel I was not American is when I went to Sacramento. And it was very much a, uh, prejudice or a discrimination. You know, and it was really quite, you know, strange I thought then. I felt peculiar because I was born there and so...well I didn't look like the Americans so I knew I was different, you know. But uh but to be... having to mix with that community you would feel you were accepted. Because there were Black communities, and Mexicans, and everything, you know. But uh we were suddenly complete strangers. We were foreigners you know.

Americans identity

Date: June 29, 2012

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Chris Komai, John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Jimmy Murakami (1933 – 2014) was inspired as a child to become a film animator by watching the Disney cartoons that were shown to Japanese Americans confined at the Tule Lake concentration camp during WWII. After attending Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, he worked as an animator for UPA. He later founded Murakami Wolf—a company that produced many well-known commercials in the 1960s and 70s—and became a feature film director of When the Wind Blows and The Snowman. After establishing residence in Ireland in recent years, he passed away in February of 2014 at age 80. (June 2014)