A Penetrating Look Into America’s Past

Roger Shimomura to lecture at CSUMB Sept. 16

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Throughout his childhood, Roger Shimomura's questions to his family about their years in a U.S government internment camp were met with silence.

It's easy to forget now – after the federal government's apology and reparations to Japanese-Americans – but for four decades the internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent during World War II was the great injustice no one would discuss – not even the victims.

''Whenever I tried, it was squelched,'' recalls Shimomura, a distinguished professor of art at the University of Kansas. ''It was such a humiliating, shameful experience that talking about it would resurrect it – so you didn't,'' Shimomura told the San Jose Mercury News in an interview several years ago.

Shimomura was in college before he could finally add some facts to his childhood memories of what his family quietly called ''the camp experience.'' Now he has filled that void of his youth with three decades worth of art. Much of his work takes as its starting point the diaries of his immigrant grandmother, Toku Shimomura, who recorded her life in America for 56 years.

The artist's exploration of the internment experience will be on display at the Monterey Museum of Art, where “Geography of Memory: Works on Paper by Roger Shimomura'' will open Sept.18.

The exhibit is being held in collaboration with the Department of Visual and Public Art at California State University, Monterey Bay. Dr. Amalia Mesa-Bains, director of VPA, is the show’s curator. The artist will appear at CSUMB for a public lecture on Sept. 16.

A Seattle native, Shimomura is well known for his clean-lined, boldly colored paintings that mix the styles of comic books and classical Japanese prints. Mr. Shimomura's stock in trade is his stinging commentary on issues of cross-cultural identity. He juxtaposes popular American images such as Mickey Mouse, Alice in Wonderland, Donald Duck, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Superman, intermingling with geisha, samurai warriors and Kabuki-masked men. Images of traditional Japanese woodblock prints or Ukiyo-e intertwined with images of an Andy Warhol-like Marilyn Monroe are common in his art.

The 12 pieces in his series “Yellow No Same” will be displayed in Monterey. The pieces view life inside and outside the barbed wire of Minidoka, the camp in Idaho where he and his family were interned. Each image is divided across the center by a line of barbed wire.

Outside the wire, he places classical Japanese figures, inside, Japanese Americans, peering out. One plays music; another is graduating from school. In one, Mickey Mouse waves from behind the barbed wire – a comment on isolation and confinement and the government's decision to put thousands of U.S. citizens behind bars. The series title refers to the notion implicit in Executive Order 9066 – the World War II decree that interned Americans of Japanese ancestry on the grounds of “national security” – that white Americans couldn’t tell the “good Japs” from the bad.

Also on display in Monterey will be the 10-lithograph series, “Memories of Childhood,” which depict his earliest memories of life in the camp.

The Geography of Memory series – a show each fall for four years – highlights the ethnic and cultural richness of the Central Coast through the works of contemporary artists. The project got under way last year with an exhibit of the works of Chinese artist Hung Liu.

The idea for the series came about several years ago when the museum asked VPA to help support a program that would provide opportunities for people to see contemporary art coming from diverse sources.

“Geography of Memory is another way of looking at cultural landscape, a way of talking about places people lived and their relationship to the area,” says Dr. Mesa-Bains. Each exhibit will have an historical component. For the Shimomura show, photographs documenting the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans from Monterey County will be displayed.

Directions to the university and a map are available on the university’s website, csumb.edu.

Anyone desiring disability accommodations is asked to call 582-4330 one week in advance.

WHAT: Public lecture by Roger Shimomura

WHEN: Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004

WHERE: University Center, CSUMB

TIME: 6:30 p.m. lecture (a reception for the artist will start at 6)

COST: Free, but $1.50 parking fee must be paid

INFORMATION: 582-4330

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