Interviews

1. Always drawing

2. Larry designing chairs in the camp

3. Larry’s fishing skill

4. Mother’s reaction to Larry's daredevil racing

5. Larry and President Clinton

6. Corvette Hall of Fame

Grace Aiko Nakamura

Sister of automotive designer Larry Shinoda

Larry’s fishing skill

And then also, when we lived over in Highland Park, we were right above the Arroyo Seco, this was before they had the Arroyo Seco freeway, the oldest freeway in California. And Busch Garden was in South Pasadena and after a big rain; all these exotic fish would go down into the Arroyo Seco. Well, nobody knew about it except my brother [Lawrence “Larry” Shinoda].

Well, the two of us knew about it and he figured out this engineering system where he could corral the fish and we could catch the fish. And so we developed a little business, we would sell the goldfish for a nickel a piece, and a nickel was a lot of money in those days. And we used to sell the goldfish; nobody knew where we got them.

And then he transferred the same skills when we went to Manzanar and he'd sneak out and get the fish and he'd catch them by hand and he had all these great fish and people would want to know where he got the fish. He went down to the fish, and he would catch them and no fisherman had that skill in Manzanar that was his unique skill. But he could always engineer things like that.

aquatic sports California concentration camps fishing Larry Shinoda Manzanar concentration camp United States World War II camps

Date: September 9, 2011

Location: California, US

Interviewer: John Esaki

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

Interviewee Bio

Grace Aiko (Shinoda) Nakamura was 15 years old when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. On May 16, 1942, her family of seven boarded a train at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and was sent to the Manzanar concentration camp in California.

In Manzanar, Grace’s younger brother Larry designed for his mother and grandmother two chairs made from recycled wooden toilet crates—complete with arm rests and reclining backs. They became a camp “sensation” attracting many admiring spectators. Larry later became a world-renowned designer whose designs for the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray and the Boss 429 Mustang remain highly admired.

In spring of 1944 Grace, Larry and their mother left Manzanar on a bus and moved to Grand Junction, Colorado. The Quakers American Friends Service Japanese American Student Relocation Project awarded Grace a scholarship to the University of Redlands and she became the first Japanese American college student to return to California, graduating with Honors. The day after graduating, she started a teaching career in the Pasadena School District--the first Japanese American hired. She eventually earned two Masters Degrees and continued a career in education and fine arts. She is married to Yosh Nakamura, a college professor of art, and has three children. (September 2012)