Interviews

1. Getting measles at the camp

2. His sister’s reaction to the camp

3. His mother’s money belt

4. Differences between Parents

5. His father’s American Dream

6. Allyship after camp

7. Coming back from camp

8. Being an outsider

9. Running Japanese store

10. Starting out in Art

11. About Orange Crate Label

12. His mother’s experience of the camp

13. “I did what I wanted to do”

Sakoguchi,Ben

(b. 1938) Japanese American painter & printmaker

Being an outsider

When you got back like to San Bernardino. You know, there—there isn’t a community there. There’s uh, maybe two other families that I know of. The Abes and the…. I can’t remember the other family’s name but that was it, you know. There was some migrant workers that were there before the war, but after the war, there was just us, you know, the three families.

And uh, I grew up in a barrio area, which is a Spanish speaking area so my parents spoke uh, Spanish, Japanese, and English. And, I can do the counting and the ordering of—you know I can name the foods and things like that because of that experience.

But you grew up realizing that you, or I did any way that that’s the way I came out of it is that, I’ve always been an observer of being on the outside and looking in on people, not being—feeling that I’m a part of it. That’s with art, that’s with society in general.

California imprisonment incarceration San Bernardino United States 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)