Japanese Americans

3 exhibitions at Tucson Desert Art Museum on Japanese American Internment during WWII

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“On November 5, the Tucson Desert Art Museum will open three related exhibitions on the removal and incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  President Roosevelt ‘s signing of Executive Order 9066 (February 19, 1942), authorized the government to forcibly exclude all people of Japanese ancestry from designated military areas along the west coast. Nearly 120,000 people, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were removed and detained in government facilities scattered across the U.S.”

Please join TDART for a sneak peak of these shows on November 4th (5 to 7:30 p.m.) before they officially open to the public on November 5. Light refreshments will be served.  7000 E. Tanque Verde Rd. Tucson.
Museum Members: free
Non-Members: $7

 The three exhibitions are listed below:

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Happy Father’s Day 2016

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DadOver 20 years ago my beloved biological father Dr. Francis Sueo Sugiyama passed away. He had been sick for about a month, in and out of the hospital, but his death was unexpected. He was only 81, and had intended to live to 90.  Sadly, he did not, but he died of old age nonetheless, not due to any cancer or other terminal illness. He had practiced dentistry and orthodontics in our home village in North Kohala, Hawaii for over 30 years.

And Dad was also an artist of Hawaiian landscapes and  painted beautiful images on smooth rocks. Happily he was also a world traveler and had been retired for 20 years. This was success for my father, as he had grown up very poor, the youngest of 8 children to immigrant sugar plantation indentured servants/workers from Hiroshima, Japan. He told me that he and his siblings had to walk to elementary school barefoot in rural Trust Territory of Hawaii.  When my father was 12 years old, one of his teenaged older brothers (Mitsuto) was dragged and killed by a sugar plantation mule.  One of his older sisters (Helen Hayayo) later died after giving birth to her 5th child on the rural island of Molokai, but such was the life of sugar plantation families.

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