A Japanese family of three in Hanford, California listen to the radio about the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. A bearded man sits with his back to the viewer at a checked cloth covered table, right hand tuning a radio. To the right, a woman in a white collared blue dress sits next to him, leaning against her right arm with a worried expression. Above her on the grey wall is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln with a small American flag sticking out of the yellow frame. A pennant, "Hanford HI" hangs above it. A little boy in a blue and white striped shirt and blue overalls stands in the left background, pointing out of the window at a bird flying away into a winter landscape. The upper half of the painting is dominated by a cloudlike scence, overlapping the domestic scene, of two fighter planes coming out of the upper right corner toward a sinking, smoking battleship, USS Arizona, exploding in red and yellow. A tiny plane is visible in the upper left corner.

Inscription
Signed in medium, bottom left: H. Sugimoto

painting
H: 53.5 in, W: 40 in
canvas
oil

California, ca. 1942
(92.97.104)
Gift of Madeleine Sugimoto and Naomi Tagawa, Japanese American National Museum
Henry Sugimoto Collection

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