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Differences between Parents

Oh, my mother did these uh, what, I, there’s a word for it, but I don’t know what it is the little birds, these wooden birds that you would paint. Uh, we have one somewhere, but it’s a really beautiful job she did.

And she’s the art half of this, you know, and my father was old school, old school Japanese, so he wanted us to be doctors or something you know, the aspirations. Art just didn’t enter his, his thinking. He never, he wanted us to be conventional and, I could never be that, you know.

But my mother was the soft one. And she was the art one, she would do us in camp, she liked to do the bonsai and the, whatever it was there. She did, did the arts, you know? He worked, he worked in the canteen, the store that was there, and his life has always been that, his business kind of mind, I don’t, I didn’t get that gene, obviously, you know.


arts families imprisonment incarceration parents World War II camps

Date: September 8, 2011

Location: California, US

Interviewer: John Esaki, Kris Kuramitsu

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

Interviewee Bio

Ben Sakoguchi, born in 1938, is a painter and printmaker who has lived in the Los Angeles area his entire life, except for the time when he and his family were incarcerated in Poston Arizona. After studying painting in the 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles, he developed a distinctive style that is rooted in pairing a narrative painting tradition with a pop culture vocabulary. He is best known for his long running “Orange Crate Label” series, using the classic crate label format to explore diverse subject matter and to combine them in a way that allows for both sharp critique and wry humor. His work is deeply and politically engaged, and he takes a deep delight in the craft and beauty of painting itself. Sakoguchi was a professor at Pasadena City College for nearly 35 years. Visit his website at bensakoguchi.com. (Oct. 2011)

Hohri,William

Going to camp with the Terminal Island people

(1927-2010) Political Activist

Hohri,William

Outhouses and showers at camp

(1927-2010) Political Activist

Hohri,William

Interned at age fifteen, I saw camp as an adventure

(1927-2010) Political Activist

Fukuhara,Jimmy Ko

The riot in Manzanar

(b. 1921) Nisei veteran who served in the occupation of Japan

Bashi,Kishi

His Shin-Issei parents

(b. 1975) Musician, composer, and songwriter

Yamashiro,Michelle

Parents identification as Peruvian Okinawan

Okinawan American whose parents are from Peru.

Wasserman,Fumiko Hachiya

The lack of discussion about family’s incarceration in Amache

Sansei judge for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in California

Sekimachi,Kay

On the process of making her leaf bowls

(b. 1926) Artist

Sekimachi,Kay

On the process of creating her Japanese paper bowls

(b. 1926) Artist

Kataoka,Mitsuru "Mits"

The first print image from film

(1934–2018) Japanese American designer, educator, and pioneer of media technologies

Kakita,Howard

Reuniting with parents in America

(b. 1938) Japanese American. Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor

Naganuma,George Kazuharu

Painting murals and signs in the army

(b. 1938) Japanese Peruvian incarcerated in Crystal City

Yamamoto,Mia

Impact of her father

(b. 1943) Japanese American transgender attorney

Sakata,Reiko T.

Parent’s Marriage

(b. 1939) a businesswoman whose family volunterily moved to Salt Lake City in Utah during the war.