♪ Community Stories theme music by Stephen Thomas Cavit ♪
[BARBARA JOHNS] I've known those works
since the 1980s when I worked at the Seattle Art Museum.
And it's really relatively unknown.
Tokita left two important historical records,
both the paintings and the wartime diary.
Both of them provide insight into a time into an experience
of Japanese immigrant life.
♪♪
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] This is a self-portrait of my father.
He painted it himself.
He even painted these little marks right in here.
His ashes were always falling down on his sweater
and these are the burn marks.
♪♪
Japantown was just up the street
on Main Streets, 5th, 6th, 7th
and on up to about 12th Avenue.
So we're right on the edge of Japantown.
[KEN MOCHIZUKI] Japantown, or Nihonmachi,
was a very lively place,
very thriving place.
♪♪
Not only are all these
businesses going on, but just all the community activities.
When you walk out on the
street, you would hear mostly Japanese spoken.
[BARBARA JOHNS] There's a claim to a home.
[KEN MOCHIZUKI] While he was an immigrant
to this country, like immigrants from all over the world.
[BARBARA JOHNS] Yes, he was a Japanese immigrant,
but he came here to make a new home.
[KEN MOCHIZUKI] He found more and better opportunities here.
And he started doing what everybody
other Americans were doing with the American Dream.
[BARBARA JOHNS] Like many Issei in first generation,
they came here, invested themselves, worked very hard.
And as they had children, their children were
were American citizens.
[KEN MOCHIZUKI]
They did consider this country and Seattle their home.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] So this is a sword that he brought over.
I identify it as the United States Tokita family sword.
(laughter)
♪♪
I just
knew that he took off on weekends on
painting.
[BARBARA JOHNS] Tokita painted in the 1930s
in a style we would call Realist.
At the time, it was often called American Scene.
This is the kind of neutral palette, neutral colors
for which he was acclaimed.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA]
If you look at his paintings, there's a lot of them around the
downtown area.
[BARBARA JOHNS] Unlike a lot of other
paintings of the time, he focuses on the modern city.
The skies are webs of overhead
telephone wires and electrical wires.
There's an attention to the signage
that emblazoned buildings and the advertising in windows.
He was a sign painter, yes,
but these were part of the American landscape.
He wasn't looking for just a pastoral view,
but really painted the modern city.
And there's a very picturesque evocation of place.
Tokita shows the detail (of) a place
that's the vernacular detail, but with a great familiarity.
Tokita and his colleagues,
particularly Nomura, were well known
in Seattle in the 1930s, and they were,
I would say, embraced or welcomed into the circle
by progressive artists of their time.
But the paintings
allow us to much more broadly, to expand
a notion of American art and what contributed to it.
The work is very capably done
and portrays a view of Seattle
of a very particular time and very particular place.
But I think it's really important to look back.
This is good painting
and to make it again part of the history
and the art history of this region and of American art.
From 1936
to 1942, Tokita and his wife
manage the Cadillac Hotel.
SHOKICHI TOKITA] Are you familiar with the Cadillac Hotel?
The entryway, the stairs that go up there just to
the left is where we lived, right in there.
[KEN MOCHIZUKI] A lot of the Issei back then,
they owned a lot of hotels in that Nihonmachi area.
For Kamekichi Tokita, he was unique,
a little more unique in the sense
that his hotel...I mean he had all kinds of
clients occupancy of that hotel, of every race.
[BARBARA JOHNS] And they did quite well apparently.
They had appliances for their family.
They...Tokita
was a trusted manager.
But on December 7th of 1941, their lives changed completely.
[NEWS ANNOUNCER] The greatest double cross in history.
Jap envoys talk peace in Washington.
Jap plains without warning bring war to America.
[BARBARA JOHNS] And on that day, about 10:00
at night, Tokita began a diary.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] This diary is one of the few
that the first generation Issei
wrote about what he was thinking when when the war started.
[BARBARA JOHNS] The diary is rare
among first person documents of this kind.
[KEN MOCHIZUKI] It's very rare
that you come across a first person diary
by an Issei.
[BARBARA JOHNS] Because most of those focus
on the experience of internment camps.
Tokita's about two thirds of Tokita's diary,
or at least what remains of it, is set
in the first five months from December 7th of '41
until the 1st of May, when they were forcibly removed.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
[BARBARA JOHNS] We know immediately
that he is a reflective, thoughtful person.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] He knew that there was going to be instances
where he would need to record what's going on
and perhaps
use it as a historical record for himself, perhaps.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
[KEN MOCHIZUKI] That insight, that
emotional, personal, individual insight
that you don't you don't get very often.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
[KEN MOCHIZUKI] So that was the important part,
was just to get that, you know, he actually did
go through a lot of hard things.
He actually did worry.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
[BARBARA JOHNS] It's a nearly day to day account
of the changing regulations, of trying to interpret
the regulations, and trying to keep up with it.
Of care for their care for their children.
Of the suspicions and
fears.
Just walking in the street.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER] The radio broadcasts still refer to us
as Japan or Japanese.
But I tremble to think of how we'll be treated
when they begin to call us Japs.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] There is so much animosity
against the Japanese people because of the
start of the war and the way
that Japan started the war by bombing Pearl Harbor.
[ANNOUNCER] They are as different from ourselves
as any people on this planet.
The real difference is in their mind.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] Regardless of what they knew about us or
what they knew or they didn't know about
us, there's going to be a certain amount of prejudice
and resentment against us
classifying us as as the enemy.
The prejudice was already coming out early on.
But I think he describes that in in the diary quite well.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER] The pressure is coming
toward us, inch by inch, from various directions.
[NARRATOR] Americans are remembering with vengeance
in their heart.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER] We have been repeatedly
telling the children to never mention the war.
The newspapers have the word Japs
written all over the place on every single page.
The radio incessantly repeats Japs.
Japs. Day in and day out.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] He's pretty cautious person and
very thoughtful.
So he didn't show it too much with us,
but when when my
mom and dad were talking about what was going on,
I could tell that there was a lot of concern between
the two of them about mostly about what would happen to us.
[NEWS ANNOUNCER] Remember Pearl Harbor.
The president's signature speeds our common defense energies
and resources.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] He was trying to predict
what would happen.
What the government would do.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER] They say
that the Department of Justice is completing a plan to remove
enemy aliens from vital defense areas of Washington
and is going to announce the finalized plan in a few days.
There's no telling what kind of fate awaits us.
[NEWS ANNOUNCER] Notices were posted.
All persons of Japanese descent were required to register.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER] Japanese people
living in America are being driven into a dire situation.
Most people who
work for American businesses have now been fired.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] The Japanese people
were pretty well established as people.
And that was completely wiped out
with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the start of the war.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
I think the hotel is really in a danger zone.
We might have to move when the plan is announced.
[KEN MOCHIZUKI] Nobody knew at that time what would happen.
Also, like their businesses?
Their homes?
Whatever happened to those?
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
[KEN MOCHISUKI] I mean when your whole future is up in the air
for a lot of these Issei,
what's going to happen to all of it?
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER] By the time this war is over,
all Japanese will be left penniless.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
[ANNOUNCER] When the Japanese attacked
Pearl Harbor, our West Coast became a potential combat zone.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER] They say
that the Department of Justice is completing a plan to remove
enemy aliens from vital defense areas of Washington
and is going to announce the finalized plan in a few days.
There is no telling what kind of fate awaits us.
[NEWS ANNOUNCER] Evacuation.
More than 100,000 men, women and children, all of Japanese
ancestry, removed from their homes in the Pacific
Coast states to wartime communities established in
out of the way places.
[KEN MOCHIZUKI]
What they worked a lifetime for.
Boom.
It's all gone and hasn't hasn't recovered, even to this day.
This once big, prosperous community was all wiped out.
It's all gone.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
Our hotel is situated within the boundaries specified.
That means we are included in the first group
to be removed from the city.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] Oh, there was a lot of hustle
and bustle and a lot of discussion
between mom and dad about
what to take with us.
And I could tell that
they really didn't know what to take because we weren't
sure where we were going.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER] This afternoon,
I removed all of my oil paintings from their frames.
I decided to keep 14 or 15 paintings.
As to the frames, I can discard them
if it becomes necessary.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] Was I scared?
I really was not scared because I knew
my parents would take care of us.
[KAMEKICHI TOKITA VOICEOVER]
Now that it has been determined that we will be evacuated,
I don't hesitate to show myself in public places anymore.
It's kind of strange,
but I feel quite at ease walking on the street now.
This emotional shift is very hard to explain.
We have been in a state of suspense,
not knowing how and when the relocation will take place.
But now at least we are certain that we will be relocated.
[BARBARA JOHNS] The more I work with the diary,
I am moved by the depth of experience,
the range of intellect that is there,
the thoughtfulness that he brings to it.
And it provides a kind of personal insight
far richer than simply an accounting of events.
[SHOKICHI TOKITA] When I receive the English
translation of the diary and I started reading the diary,
I couldn't believe the things that he had written in there
expressing his his feelings.
[KEN MOCHIZUKI] It's very important to be history
told and written by those with actual experience.
It is a record of that time
and it is of value
to the succeeding generations.
I don't know
if that was his intention to leave something behind, but
we should should be glad that he did do it.
♪ Community Stories theme music by Stephen Thomas Cavit ♪