painting
date: label: date made
content: 1944
notes: label: Description
content: Color landscape painting of a Japanese American prison camp during World War II. Japanese characters in the center of the painting identify it as “Tule Lake, March 3rd, 1944.” The image features a guard tower, vegetation, and a sunset. The back of the painting has more Japanese writing. This is a sumi-e (Japanese ink wash) painting by Tsutomu “Jimmy” Mirikitani (1920-2012) while imprisoned at Tule Lake prison camp in California. Mirikitani drew and painted many scenes of Tule Lake as a desolate prison, often depicting himself as a small figure with a red beret.
label: Description
content: Mirikitani was born in Sacramento, California, raised in Hiroshima, Japan, and then returned to the United States at age 18, where he lived with his sister Kazuko in Seattle when the war broke out. Mirikitani was one of the thousands of inmates who renounced their US citizenship as a result of the Loyalty questionnaire, which impacted the rest of his life as he continued to be held without charge in Tule Lake and Crystal City, Texas after the end of the war and then was transferred to Seabrook Farms, a frozen food manufacturing plant near Bridgeton, New Jersey on “relaxed internment” until 1947. Mirikitani’s US citizenship was not restored until 1959, but he never received the government letter because by then he had moved so often and frequently gone off the grid. In the early 1950’s Miriktani moved to New York City and worked as a cook in New York and along the East Coast until 1980. In 2001, Mirikitani was homeless when he met filmmaker Linda Hattendorf who created an award-winning documentary, “The Cats of Mirikitani” (2006) about his life, which resulted in several exhibitions and reunification with his sister Kazuko in 2002. Mirikitani passed away at age 92 on October 21st, 2012 in New York City.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Military and Society: Armed Forces History, Japanese American
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Koho Yamamoto
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2016.0152.01
label: accession number
content: 2016.0152
label: catalog number
content: 2016.0152.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: painting
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: ink (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: painted (overall production method/technique)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 8 in x 10 1/2 in; 20.32 cm x 26.67 cm