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AI: Today is March 20, 2003. We're continuing our interview with Roger Shimomura. I'm Alice Ito with the Densho Project and also co-interviewing is Mayumi Tsutakawa. Videographer is Dana Hoshide. Roger, I'm just gonna recap a little briefly where we left off yesterday. And that was that you had just finished describing your service as a second lieutenant in the United States Army and your service as a gunnery officer in Korea. You also described how you had rotated back to the States and been stationed at Fort Lewis, which is just a little south of here in Seattle, south of Seattle that is, and that in 1964 you were discharged from the army. And so that kind of brings us up to the point where we are now. And I wanted to ask you, what did you do then at that point, when you were discharged? Where did you go and what did you do?

RS: Well, obviously, I came back to Seattle and wanted to begin to fulfill my plans of becoming a freelance graphic designer, illustrator. And there were several people that I went to school with, Dave Setsuda was one of them and a fellow named Jim Hayes. And we were in the same graduating class and we had always talked about the possibility of opening up a graphic design studio together. But at the time I sort of felt like I hadn't really gotten my feet wet and the two of them had been working professionally for a couple of years. So I decided that I would try to pick up some freelance jobs and gain a little bit of experience before we actually made a move to sort of integrate our talents to open up this studio. And so I started picking up these jobs like designing menus for different restaurants and designing corporate logos and so on and so forth, but I really didn't like it and I wasn't sure why. I wasn't sure whether it was the quality of the jobs that I was getting or whether there was something about the field itself that I didn't like. And I found myself sort of drifting away from having any kind of desire to do that.

And eventually, because I had bills to pay, I decided to get another job that was not really related to it, and ended up getting a job as a draftsman for the University of Washington. I believe it was the architects' office or the engineering office. I can't remember for sure, but one of the things that I had to do was to take care of all of the original drawings to every building that was built on the campus of the University of Washington. Some of these, of course, went back to the nineteenth century and were just amazing drawings and great detail of some of the original library, of all of the oldest buildings and so on. It was very fascinating. And I used to make copies of these because the architects in the office would want to remodel, for example, one of the rooms or something and they needed a blueprint of the floor-plan. And so I would take it out and make a copy of it. And then eventually I started drafting, myself. So for a period of about a year to a year-and-a-half I worked in this office as a draftsman.

And then eventually, sort of started phasing back into doing more graphic design work because I knew I didn't want to end up in that office and doing that for any period of time. And one of the things that sort of drew me back to the field was that I got the commission to do all of the artwork for the Polynesian Pavilion of the New York World's Fair. And the producer of that pavilion was an attorney living here in Seattle. And so, I started out by doing, I remember five illustrations of the pavilion that were given to the five kings of the five kingdoms of Polynesia, Pango Pango and Bora Bora and Tahiti and so on and so forth. I can't remember all five of them but I did these five illustrations and the attorney was so pleased with that we immediately moved into doing a big sign, neon sign for the front of the pavilion. And then eventually that went into the restaurant that was at the pavilion and designing the menu and all of the signage that went in the restaurant, and even costume illustrations that the waiters and waitresses and bartender wore, and so I was getting a real complete sort of experience working with just about every phase of graphic design and illustration that there was, but I still didn't like it.

And that's when I realized that I better start looking for other possibilities. And for the first time in my life I started to paint because I wanted to paint. And that was an extremely important turning point for me in my life, because up to then I, I had only painted in the painting courses that I was required to take to get my degree in commercial art. And I was really an average student. And I think I was an average student because I had just average interest in it. So I started painting and I was still able to pay all of my bills by picking up graphic design jobs that were sort of the result of having done this sort of high-visibility job for the Polynesian Pavilion. But I also remember incidents like designing a logo for this one real estate company. And I remember they asked me to come up with twenty-five sketches for this logo, and staying up all night working on this and meeting with them the next morning and having done twenty-five, having some idea of which ones I thought were the best and the most interesting. All the way to the ones that I thought were done only because they wanted twenty-five. And sitting in that room with the executives of this real estate company and having them look at these designs and invariably picking out the worst ones. And I'm sitting there, thinking to myself, I had this rent that I had to pay, and I needed the money for this job. And ending up modifying the designs which were among the worst of the lot and really being embarrassed to have my name associated with them, but doing it and getting paid, and, to me this entire episode was just typical of what I didn't like about the whole field was that you were selling out to people that were basically visually illiterate and catering to them in order to make money to pay the rent.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.