"Yasuo Kuniyoshi's Life and Work in New York"
Kuro Murase
Kuro Murase (1880-1947) was a Japanese American physician who was born in Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan in 1880. He earned a doctorate from Ngoya University Medical Graduate School.
He immigrated to the U.S. sometime around 1911, where he pursued further education in ophthalmology at Bellevue Hospital.
Leo Amino
Japanese American sculptor Leo Amino (1911-1989) was born in Taiwan and educated in Tokyo. He immigrated to the U.S. as a young man in 1929, where he attended San Mateo Junior College before anti-Japanese sentiment moved him to cross the country to New York in 1935.
He is the first American artist to use plastics as a principal material of sculptural composition, and the innovator of cast plastics in American sculpture.
The only Asian American artist to teach on faculty in the history of the Summer Art Sessions at Black Mountain College, he is also one of few artists of Asian descent to gain this level of national exposure in the first half of the 20th century.
Rebuilding Community
Labor Recruitment Poster, “Year Around Work for Men and Women,” 1941-1945. Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center, Rutgers University Libraries Between 1939 and 1945, Seabrook Farms and other agricultural enterprises in southern New Jersey, including the Campbell Soup Company, experienced a substantial influx of seasonal migrant workers brought on board to address the escalated wartime production […]
Education for Young Japanese Americans
At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a significant number of Japanese American students were enrolled in educational institutions across the United States. In response to the evacuation, local groups endeavored to facilitate the prompt transfer of students to educational institutions situated east of military zones. To that end, a Student Relocation Committee […]
Japanese Americans and Democracy
Prior to the war, the Japanese community in New York was divided between the pro-Tokyo and the progressives. In response to the potential threat of war, the progressives united to protect community members from dismissal due to discrimination, leading to the formation of the Committee for the Democratic Treatment of Japanese Residents in the Eastern […]
Test Off Canvas Artifact
Takeo Shiota
Takeo Shiota was a Japanese American landscape architect best known for his design of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the rooftop garden at the Hotel Astor.
Frank Masao Okamura
Frank Masao Okamura was born in Hiroshima in 1911 and moved to the U.S. at age 13 to join his father in California.
He returned briefly to Japan to marry and then his and his wife, Toshimi Nishikubo, then returned to America to start a business.
Unfortunately, he lost his business in 1942 when he, his wife, and their two young daughters were sent to the Manzanar Relocation Camp.
Okamura was on the staff of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden from 1947 to 1981.
The Okamuras, who lived in a brownstone they owned on the Upper West Side, rented rooms to visitors from Japan.
Taro Yashima
Taro Yajima (birth name: Jun Iwamatsu) was born on September 21, 1908, in a seaside town in Kagoshima Prefecture.
He immigrated to the U.S. in 1939 with his wife Mitsu Yashima (birth name: Tomoe Sasago).
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Iwamatsu enlisted in the US Army and worked as an artist for the US Office of War Information (OWI) and later for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). It was during this time that they assumed their pen names.
After the war, Taro and Mitsu were granted permanent residency by an act of the U.S. Congress.
