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

His mother’s experience of the camp

She’s an American citizen. Educated in Japan. She was dying of cancer and I asked her you know, because, “shikataganai” you don’t, just don’t, don’t talk about it. She wanted us to be good Americans and we all came out good Americans.

She didn’t want us to be bitter and we weren’t bitter. But I think we are. Our family is a little bit nuts, I think. We’re all—no I really mean that. We’re not like maybe it’s the San Bernardino isolation. I don’t know if you grew up in Japanese communities but we didn’t have no Japanese communities. It was us. That family. Those three families.

Anyways, my mother was dying of cancer and she, she finally opened up and said, “You know, I hated that place. I hated every single day.” And she was mad. But I’ve never seen her do that until she was dying.

concentration camps imprisonment incarceration 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)