Artwork Details
- Title
- Diary: December 12, 1941
- Artist
- Date
- 1980
- Location
- Dimensions
- 50 1⁄4 x 60 in. (127.6 x 152.4 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of the artist
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- acrylic on canvas
- Classifications
- Highlights
- Subjects
- Figure female — bust
- Object — furniture — screen
- Object — written matter — book
- Object — furniture — table
- History — United States — World War II
- Figure male — knee length
- Object Number
- 1991.171
- Research Notes
Artwork Description
Diary: December 12, 1941 is from a series of paintings by Roger Shimomura inspired by the diaries of his paternal grandmother, Toku Shimomura. The title references a date that fell between the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the US issuing of Executive Order 9066. Shimomura and his family were among the more than 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II because of that order.
Dressed in Japanese clothing and with diary, brush, and ink at hand, Toku sits contemplating her fate. On the shoji screen behind her looms the silhouette of Superman, an emblem of America. In 1941, she had lived in the United States for nearly thirty years. Yet her grandson depicts her in a scene reminiscent of eighteenth-century Japan. The choice underscores the prevalent perception that Asians in the United States are forever foreign--and the expectation that even a third-generation American like Shimomura should make art that, like him, "looks" Japanese.
Gallery label, 2024