Featured Object for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
Diary: December 12, 1941 by Roger ShimomuraRoger Shimomura's "Diary Series" of paintings was inspired by the daily journal kept by his grandmother, Toku Shimomura, who immigrated to this country from Japan in 1912. The artist gives visual form to events that deeply affected the Japanese community in the United States during World War II.
"I spent all day at home. Starting from today we were permitted to withdraw $100 from the bank. This was our sustenance of life, we who are enemy to them. I deeply felt America's large-heartedness in dealing with us."
Written five days after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, this entry is the subject of Diary, December 12, 1941. The painting depicts a woman seated in the confined space of a Japanese-style room; appearing as a shadow across the back wall is the figure of Superman, the great American symbol of protection.
In conflating the Japanese Ukiyoe print of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the modern American comic book, Shimomura creates a unique, hybrid style that encompasses the traditional sensibilities of his grandmother and his own ironic, and sensitive, response to them.
Source: National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and Boston, New York, Toronto, and London: National Museum of American Art with Bulfinch Press, Little Brown and Company, 1995).
Pictured: Roger Shimomura, born 1939, Diary: December 12, 1941, 1980, acrylic on canvas, 50 1/4 x 60 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist.