After initially working as an illustrator and commercial decorator, he had a successful career as a painter, following a 1927 summer spent in the Sierra Nevada, and was a faculty member in the Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1932 to 1954, interrupted by World War II,[5] when he spent a year in an internment camp.

At the age of seven he began his formal training by a master painter in the art of sumi-e, Japanese ink and brush painting.

In Tokyo, he joined the artist group, Nihon Bijutsuin (the Japan Art Institute), and became apprenticed to the painter Tanryo Murata for three years.

[7] When he got to San Francisco, he found work as a domestic servant in a household, with the pay of $1.50 per week plus room and board.

[15] The shop was shot at after the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, and eventually the Obatas were forced to close it and cancel all classes.

[16] Executive Order 9066 led to Obata organizing a large sale of his many paintings and woodblock prints.

[15] He donated the profits from the sale to establish a scholarship for a student "regardless of race or creed, who ... has suffered the most from this war.

"[15] University President Robert Gordon Sproul, a friend of the Obatas, offered to store many of the remaining works.

Camp administrators were supportive, seeing art as a constructive way to occupy detainees' time, and Obata and his colleagues were eventually allowed to order supplies from Sears Roebuck catalogs or purchase them in town.

When Chiura Obata painted New Moon Over Topaz, Utah, he was a prisoner at the camp: one of 120,000 Japanese Americans to be incarcerated during World War II.

The painting shows a dreamy moonlit desert, with just a few dark lines to hint at the barbed wire fences and guard towers that held him and his family captive.

In 1950, he and his wife moved out of the attic apartment of a friend, purchasing a house in the Elmwood district in Berkeley, where they had lived before the war.

[16] His one-man shows continued, as did his sketching and painting trips in the high country, often with the Sierra Club.

Obata played a pivotal role in introducing Japanese art techniques and aesthetics to other artists in California.

[7] From 1955 to 1970, Obata traveled throughout California, giving lectures and demonstrations on Japanese brush painting, and leading tours.

In 1965 he received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 5th Class, Emperor's Award, for promoting good will and cultural understanding between the United States and Japan.

[6] Their son Gyo Obata became one of the founding partners of the global architecture-engineering giant HOK, responsible for the Apple campus in Cupertino, California, American Airlines Arena in Miami, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and the BBC's 2013 headquarters.

[26] Hill grew to understand her grandfather's importance in art history when “impetus and curiosity” piqued after his passing.

January 13 – April 29, 2018: Chiura Obata: An American Modern, Art, Design and Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara.

May 25 – September 2, 2018: Chiura Obata: An American Modern, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City.

This section of the highway begins near the Tioga Pass Entrance Station at the elevation of 9,943 feet on the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park and runs east through rugged mountain terrain toward Lee Vining, California.