by Roger Shimomura

(c) 1996 Bellevue Art Museum. Reprinted by permission.

My grandmother, Toku Shimomura, came to this country in 1912 to marry my grandfather, who had been living in the Pacific Northwest since 1906. Toku, who was a decorated nurse in the Japan Imperial Navy, became a licensed midwife of the State of Washington and went on to deliver more than 1,000 babies in the Greater Seattle area. She came out of retirement on June 26, 1939, to deliver me in the house that my parents lived in, located in Seattle's Central District.

During World War II, after Japanese airplanes had bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, our family was forcibly relocated by the U.S. government to the Puyallup State Fairgrounds to live temporarily, while permanent concentration camps for 120,000 Japanese Americans were being built at 10 locations across the country. My very first recollection of life was my third birthday. I recall walking in and out of the temporary shelter that we occupied in Puyallup, proudly telling everyone that I was three years old. Shortly after that, our family, along with more than 10,000 other Japanese Americans from the Seattle area, were moved to a desolate site in southern Idaho, surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers with machine guns pointed at us. Our camp was called Camp Minidoka.

Prior to the time of the evacuation, my father had been working as a pharmacist at Joseph Hart Pharmacy in downtown Seattle. He was allowed to leave Minidoka approximately 10 months after arriving in camp, provided he seek employment somewhere other than the western sector of the United States. In 1944, my mother, sister and I joined my father in Chicago, Illinois, where he had found employment at a drugstore owned by a German American. I attended kindergarten at Oakenwald Elementary School in South Chicago.

My interest in art started early. Art was always my first love, and my family and teachers reinforced that I was good in art. My grandmother kept my drawings from first through sixth grade. Art served a very special purpose for me when I was growing up. My family was not needy, but there were a lot of things that my friends had that, for one reason or another, I couldn't have. For example, my parents said that cowboy boots were bad for my feet; therefore, I knew that I could "have" them only by drawing them out of Sears Roebuck catalogues. Later on when the fad was engineering boots, black leather boots with a side buckle, my parents said I couldn't have them since that would associate me with motorcycle gangs. So, once again, I made a lot of drawings of them from every different view.

In 1945, after the war ended, we were allowed to return to our home in Seattle, where I went on and attended Coleman Grade School, Washington Junior High and Garfield High School, graduating in 1957. It was in high school that I developed a serious interest in art, although there was only one art class offered at that time. The two highlights of my senior year were being named yearbook art editor and designing the large plaque of President Garfield that was installed in the floor of the main entrance at Garfield High School.

Despite my father wanting me to study medicine in college, to fulfill his one-time dream of becoming a doctor, I majored in Commercial Design at the University of Washington, following in the footsteps of my three uncles (on my mother's side), all of whom were successful graphic designers in the Seattle area. Upon graduating, I fulfilled a two-year military obligation, serving most of the time as an artillery officer in Korea.

Following my discharge from the army, I worked as a freelance graphic designer. My biggest account was the Polynesian Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in Flushing, Long Island, where I designed everything from pavilion signage to menu covers. I discovered at this time that my temperament was not suited to this occupation and began to paint for the first time. For the next year, my love of painting grew in direct proportion to my loss of interest in the advertising profession, and I decided to enroll at the University of Washington in the graduate painting program. Simultaneously to this, I married a woman from Auburn, and we were eventually to have three children, all of whom, to this day, live in the Seattle area. It was during these years that I first began to exhibit my work in local art fairs and festivals. One of the earliest highlights of those years was when I was accepted into the Bellevue Art Museum's Pacific Northwest Arts & Crafts Fair in 1965.

In 1967 I decided to transfer to another graduate school to broaden my education, since I had never really lived outside of the Northwest for any extended period of time. I entered the graduate program at Syracuse University, in upstate New York, graduating in 1969 with a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting. Having made up my mind that I wanted to make a career of college teaching, I accepted a full-time position in the art department of the University of Kansas, in Lawrence.

As a result of being one of a very small minority of Asian Americans in Kansas, I began to paint about issues surrounding my ethnic heritage. My grandmothers's diaries, which she maintained for 56 years of her life experience in America, became the inspiration of a series of paintings and experimental theater pieces specifically focusing in upon the internment years. My more recent efforts in painting and experimental theater art have dealt with racial stereotypes, cross-cultural relationships and Japan bashing. Japan bashing means words or acts of prejudice directed against Asians in America.

In the 26 years that I have been working and teaching in Kansas, my work has been seen in more than 70 solo exhibitions and more than 200 group exhibitions in the United States, Canada, and Japan. I have written more than 35 performances pieces, which have been seen across the country. In the fall of 1994 I was designated one of nine University Distinguished Professors, across all disciplines, at the University of Kansas, an accomplishment of which I am very proud.

Roger Shimomura's work is featured in an exhibition at the Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue Washington this fall. "Roger Shimomura: Paintings, Prints Installation and Performance" will be on display from September 21 through December 1, 1996. For information, visit the Bellevue Art Museum web site.

Also this fall, Roger Shimomura: Delayed Reactions is on display at Western Washington University, Bellingham from September 30 through November 27. This exhibition was organized by the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas.