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

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

I remember asking my father, once, What was that thing we experienced in camp? I remember even putting it that way. And my father just went into this rage, and, because I think he felt that we had passed that point of even bringing it up any longer, that we had not talked about it long enough that it should have disappeared completely from our collective memories. And I just remember how upset he got from me bringing it up and saying, We don't need to talk about that. We want, we're trying to forget it, don't ever bring it up again. And that was it. That was it. And he was so emphatic that I never did bring it up again, despite the fact that...

I think I was in high school at the time that this happened. And it probably wasn't until reparations in the late '70s that we were able to talk about it again. But of course he had to sort of get permission. He had to make sure that other people were talking about it before he would talk about it.

imprisonment incarceration Redress movement World War II camps

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.