Interviews

1. Memories of the ship heading to the U.S.

2. Thunder in Crystal City

3. Kids activities in Crystal City

4. Having a house at camp

5. Having nowhere to go postwar

6. Feeling of foreigness

7. Art helped him to feel less foreign in school

8. First Boy Scouts troop in San Francisco

9. Trip to Japan as a Boy Scout

10. Playing basketball in the army

11. Working as a typist in the army

12. Painting murals and signs in the army

George Kazuharu Naganuma

(b. 1938) Japanese Peruvian incarcerated in Crystal City

Art helped him to feel less foreign in school

I like art, so I was doing a lot of drawing and things like that, and the teachers found out I could draw pretty good and they would ask me to, if I could come to their house and paint picture on the wall for their kids on the weekend, and they'll feed me lunch and everything. I was doing that as a kid in grammar school.

Even in middle school, the grammar school that I went to, they remembered me and they asked whether I can go in their grammar school and do some painting for for the stage, you know. From junior high school to go to grammar school and do this, so they asked the teacher if they can do this, and they arranged it so I did that. I did a lot of things for high school, the teachers, my art teacher asked me to design a placemat for the Teacher's Association, they had a dinner party and I had to design a placemat for them, and things like that. I began to kind of fit in more, forget about being a foreigner as I went on my life.

arts identity Japanese Peruvians schools

Date: September 20, 2019

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Tom Ikeda and Yoko Nishimura

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum and Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

George Kazuharu Naganuma was born in Lima, Peru to his Issei parents in 1938. His family were forced to board a ship, to be incarcerated at Crystal City, Texas, during World War II. They remained there even after the war had ended, without a place to go. They were able to leave via a sponsorship by a reverend in San Francisco, California, where they were able to find jobs and housing. George joined the Boy Scouts in San Francisco and was able to visit Japan with his troop. He joined the U.S. Army and worked as a clerical typist. (June 2020)