Kamekichi Tokita
His detailed, deeply expressive diary and sketches he made there were later published and recognized as important records of the Japanese American wartime experience.
After graduating from high school in 1915 his father sent him to China (the exact location is unrecorded) to work as a tea salesman, but he instead spent much of his two years there studying calligraphy and traditional ink painting under a Chinese teacher.
Exasperated by his son's growing rebelliousness, Tokita's father planned to send him to work with business associates in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States.
Around the same time, he met Kenjiro Nomura, a fellow Issei (first-generation Japanese immigrant) painter who became his close friend and business partner, and who introduced him to oil painting.
He painted scenes of the world around him—houses, apartment buildings, stores, streets, bridges, the waterfront—using bold outlines and subtle valuation of earthen tones.
Because of his vernacular subject matter and realist approach he came to be associated with the American Scene painters, but unlike many of them he rarely painted human forms.
[8] There are indications Tokita's work was displayed as early as 1924 in Japantown, but his first real notice came in 1928, when his painting Yeslerway was included in the First Northwest Independent Salon.
[9] That same year, he became Kenjiro Nomura's partner at the Noto Sign Co., whose building at Sixth and Main, in the heart of Japantown, served as their workshop, home, studio, and salon.
In 1935, at Callahan's urging, Tokita joined the Group of Twelve, a progressive artists' collective which held several successful exhibitions.
[18] Tokita began keeping a diary on December 7, 1941, and the entries are often surprising, revealing the complexity of the times for an Issei man.
More so than any other memoirist, he captures the uncertainty of the five months between Pearl Harbor and the beginning of the forced relocation, in which the Nikkei were buffeted by physical and legal threats, contradictory orders, rumors, and intense anxiety.
Tokita, though no threat to the security of his adopted country, is understanding of Japan's war aims, proud of its military prowess, dismissive of both Axis and Allied propaganda, and thankful for the humane actions of individual whites.
He reveals the rivalry — amplified by the close quarters of the camps — between older, conservative Issei and brash, energetic Nisei.
He resents the suffering of his family in temperatures ranging from near zero to over a hundred, but appreciates the beauty of the surrounding landscape, a desert moonrise leaving him awestruck.
[19] Their eighth child, a daughter, was born in 1946, and the following year, mainly through Haruko's effort, they purchased operation and management of the New Lucky Hotel in Chinatown.
