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

Roger Shimomura

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

Playing a racist game with other children

The fact is, when we got out of camp and we went back to Seattle, one of our favorite games to play was Kill the Jap. And right next to our back porch there was a sort of a play area. My dad had a lot of scrap lumber and we would rearrange that lumber to create these sort of shelters that we sort of treated as shelters that would protect us from bombs that the Japs dropped on us. And of course we would always argue about who the Jap was gonna be, because none of us wanted to be the Jap. We all wanted to be John Wayne, you know, because John Wayne was the biggest Jap killer. And so I actually have a photograph of that, of all of us playing war and having, you know, helmets and guns and all that kind of stuff, and taking turns being the Jap.

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.