Interviews

1. Grandmother's background as a nurse in Japan

2. Grandfather's arrival in the U.S., experiencing discrimination

3. Grandmother's experience in the U.S. as a picture bride

4. Playing a racist game with other children

5. Depicting issues of ethnic identity through childhood artwork

6. Japanese American community life

7. Receiving a negative reaction from father upon asking about World War II experience

8. Dealing with racism within army unit in Korea

9. A conversation with a farmer in Kansas

10. Collection of artifacts depicting racial stereotypes influences art

Shimomura,Roger

(b. 1939) Japanese American painter, printmaker & professor

Depicting issues of ethnic identity through childhood artwork

Thirty-five or forty years later, I found these manila envelopes at my mom and dad's house, and they were filled with all the drawings that I did from the first through sixth grade. And my grandmother had kept them. And so my mother presented them to me and said, Take a look at these. You might be interested. And I pulled them all out, and sure as heck they were all the drawings I did from the first through the sixth grade.

And the ones that I found to be the most interesting were all of the ones that I drew of my family, because every time I drew my mother I drew her with blond hair and blue eyes. And it was just astonishing. I never realized it. All these years, here's my father, my sister, myself, and there's my, who's this blond? And that was my mom. And I'm sure I did that because for every good intention, it was, I wanted her to be the ideal mother, and that's what it took to be ideal at the time was to have blond hair and blue eyes. But what was even more interesting was that the third grade drawings were of myself with blond hair. So, after a few years I didn't settle for just my mom but I wanted to make, idealize myself, too, by giving myself blond hair and blue eyes.

identity

Date: March 18 & 20, 2003

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Alice Ito and Mayumi Tsutakawa

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Roger Shimomura's paintings, prints, and theater pieces address sociopolitical issues of Asian America. Many of his works are inspired by the diaries kept by his late immigrant grandmother for fifty-six years. Shimomura has had more than 100 solo exhibitions of his paintings and prints, and has presented his experimental theater pieces at such venues as the Franklin Furnace, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Widely honored as an educator, he was designated a University Distinguished Professor by the University of Kansas. In 2001 the College Art Association presented him with the Artist Award for Most Distinguished Body of Work in recognition of his four-year, twelve-museum national tour of the painting exhibition An American Diary. He retired from teaching in 2004.

Shimomura's personal papers are being collected by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. He is represented by galleries in New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Miami, and Seattle.

*The full interview is available Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.