His art, showcased across the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Israel, often combines American popular culture, traditional Asian tropes, and stereotypical racial imagery to provoke thought and debate on issues of identity and social perception.

After about two years at Minidoka, the family moved to Chicago (outside the West Coast Japanese exclusion zone), where Shimomura's father had secured a job in a pharmacy.

As a child in the postwar years, he played a game called "Kill the Jap" with the sons of artist Paul Horiuchi, who lived across the street.

[3] As he grew up, he felt increasing anguish over the conflict between his father's wish that he become a doctor, and his own desire to follow in the footsteps of his three uncles, who were all commercial artists.

[4] After graduating from Garfield High School, Shimomura began studying graphic design at the University of Washington, earning his BA in 1961.

Pop culture icons such as Mickey Mouse, Coca-Cola, and Pikachu appear incongruously in bright, flat-perspective landscapes, sometimes with absurdly altered portraits of Shimomura himself.

[6][7] His more subtle works often combine traditional Japanese woodblock printing with impressions of the incarceration camps, taken from both his own youthful memories and passages from the diary that his grandmother Toku kept for many years.

[4] While continuing to teach at the University of Kansas, Shimomura gradually became one of the most recognized artists in the United States, amassing awards and exhibition in many of the country's major museums and arts institutions.