World Trade Center 1

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

On September 11, 2001, Mirikitani was living and working in Washington Square Park, in direct view of the World Trade Center.

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
World Trade Center 1

Tule Lake 2

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

Mirikitani was living in Seattle with his sister before being imprisoned by the U.S. government in Tule Lake during World War II. This work shows Castle Rock Mountain, dominating the landscape, with Mount Rainier behind.

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Tule Lake 2

Tule Lake 1

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

Mirikitani was incarcerated at Tule Lake concentration camp in California for three and a half years during World War II. He shows himself sketching near Block 4 where he lived in 1943, with the words “Mirikitani artist” written alongside his figure.

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Tule Lake 1

Tiger Cat and Bamboo

1999 - 2006
Ink

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Tiger Cat and Bamboo

Tiger Cat

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Tiger Cat

Mother and Baby

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Mother and Baby

Katrina

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

This work includes an image of a man with two cats who became homeless after Hurricane Katrina.

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Katrina

Hot Springs Country

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

Hot springs country was a favorite resort spot and the distinguished location of 12th c. Samurai Wars. Mirikitani tells of old Samurai objects found on 300 acres, and a woman, here sitting under a 1,000-year-old gingko tree, promised to him in marriage by her mother at a young age.

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Hot Springs Country

Hiroshima Peace Memorial

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

Mirikitani portrays Kannon, the goddess of mercy, alongside the destruction of Hiroshima during World War II and the present-day peace park, the site of a memorial event held every August 6.

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Hiroshima Peace Memorial

Childhood Daruma

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

Mirikitani includes original photographs of himself, including him wearing a kendo uniform at age nine, taken at a farmer’s shrine in Japan. The sketch of Daruma recalls when Mirikitani was six years old and got in trouble for painting Daruma on the wall of his grandfather’s storage room.

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Childhood Daruma

Cats with Red Snapper (Cat with Red Snapper)

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Cat with Red Snapper

Cat with Red Snapper

Cat with Still Life 1

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

The ginger flower, known to “bloom once in a hundred years,” rises from a modern-style vase with surrounding acorns, oak leaves, fish and assorted fruits and vegetables.

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Cat with Still Life 1

Cat with Sardine and White Fish

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Cat with Sardine and White Fish

Cat with Okinawa White Fish

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Cat with Okinawa White Fish

Cat Taking a Sun Bath in Autumn (Cat Taking Sun Bath in Autumn)

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Cat Taking Sun Bath in Autumn

Cat Taking Sun Bath in Autumn

Battle of Midway

1999 - 2006
Mixed media

The U.S. aircraft carrier Yorktown was sunk during World War II in the 1942 Battle of Midway. Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, led the campaign for Japan.

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Battle of Midway

Bamboo

1999 - 2006
Ink, acrylic

All Rights Reserved. Artworks courtesy of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani and Linda Hattendorf
--
Bamboo

Jimmy Mirikitani at work, circa 1940s (Painting 1940s)

Painting 1940s

Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani (Peace 2003)

Photo by Hiroko Masuike

(b. June 15, 1920, Sacramento, CA; d. October 21, 2012, New York, NY)

Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani was born in Sacramento, California, in 1920 and raised in Hiroshima, Japan. At age 18, he returned to the United States to pursue a career in art and escape the growing militarism in Japan. He was living with his sister Kazuko and her family in Seattle, Washington, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Executive Order 9066 forced Jimmy and his sister to leave their home and move to separate internment camps hundreds of miles apart. Kazuko was sent to the Minidoka camp in Idaho while Jimmy was sent to Tule Lake, in northern California.

When the government required internees to take a loyalty test, Tule Lake became a segregation center where those deemed "disloyal" were congregated. Thousands there renounced their US citizenship in protest. Jimmy was one of these renunciants. After the war ended, Jimmy and hundreds of others continued to be held without charge, first in Tule Lake, then in a Department of Justice INS camp in Crystal City, Texas. A single lawyer, Wayne Collins, worked for decades to help Jimmy and 5,000 other renunciants reclaim the citizenship they had given up under duress.

In 1946, Jimmy was transferred to Seabrook Farms, a frozen food manufacturing plant near Bridgeton, New Jersey. Here, he and other renunciants on "relaxed internment" worked the 12 hour night shift, six days a week, sorting vegetables on an assembly line. By August 1947, Collins won their release, but fully restoring their citizenship took another decade.

Jimmy finally arrived in New York City in the early 1950's to attempt to resume his art career. When an art professor found him sleeping in Columbia University's library, Jimmy was referred to the New York Buddhist Church where he was provided with room, board, and training as a cook. For years he traveled the East Coast to do seasonal work in resorts, summer camps, and country clubs. While cooking at a restaurant on Long Island, he met Jackson Pollock.

Jimmy's US citizenship was finally restored in 1959, but by then he had moved so often that the government's letter never reached him. Eventually Jimmy became a live-in cook on Park Avenue. But when his employer died in the late 1980's, Jimmy was suddenly again without a home or a job. Within a year, he was living in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, selling his artwork to survive. He met Linda Hattendorf in Soho in 2001. She helped him apply for Social Security, SSI, and housing benefits, and in 2002 he moved into an assisted-living retirement center run by Village Care of New York, where he lived until his passing in October of 2012. 

All Rights Reserved.

For more information about the artist, his work, or the award-winning film, “The Cats of Mirikitani,” by Linda Hattendorf and Masa Yoshikawa, please visit www.thecatsofmirikitani.com

For information about the Jimmy Mirikitani traveling exhibit available through the Wing Luke Asian Museum, please visit http://www.wingluke.org/exhibitions/mirikitani.html
--
Peace 2003

Peace 2003