Diary

Roger Shimomura, artist

born 1939

Diary, 1978

Portfolio/Series title: Minidoka Series #3

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: acrylic; canvas

Dimensions:
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 152.1 x 183 cm
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 59 7/8 x 72 1/16 in
Frame Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 61 7/8 x 73 1/4 in

Credit line: Museum purchase

Accession number: 1979.0051

Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Staging Shimomura

This painting evokes the meticulous diaries kept by Toku Shimomura, the artist’s grandmother, who arrived in the United States in 1912 as one of thousands of brides who came to the country at the turn of the 20th century for arranged marriages. On her journey to America, Toku began keeping a diary of her thoughts and experiences, a practice she continued almost daily for 56 years until her death in 1968. The entries of Toku’s diary paint a complex picture of her life before, during, and after incarceration in the Minidoka internment camp. In an entry from December 12, 1941, just a few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she writes:
I spent the whole day in the house. I hear that permission has been given today to withdraw one hundred dollars from the bank. This in order to preserve the lives and safety of us enemy aliens. I felt more than ever the generosity with which America treats us.

Staging Shimomura

Archive Label 2003:
Since coming to teach at KU's Visual Arts Department, Roger Shimomura has become widely known for his "Oriental Masterpieces" and "Oriental Masterprints," which combine traditional Japanese print styles and a contemporary sense of graphic design. He turned to a more personal subject in the six large paintings of the Minidoka series, based on the experiences of his family in a Japanese-American internment camp in southern Idaho during World War II. Shimomura's earliest recollections are from the camp, which he entered at the age of three.

The Spencer Museum's painting from this series is called Diary, and is dedicated to Shimomura's grandmother, who is shown in the foreground keeping the journal. In the distance a mother teaches a child to walk, but the limits of his world are rudely indicated by the barbed wire seen through the open door.