<Begin Segment 50>

AI: I wonder if you would just say a little bit about "Exodus." Well, a couple of them, but about the "Exodus" painting. It, I was wondering if you had consciously envisioned that as a kind of a representation or a remembering, a recreation of the removal of people from Bainbridge Island, where there's, they are, there're famous photos of the Bainbridge Japanese Americans coming out.

RS: Right. That's, I mean, that's probably in there. That wasn't directly the inspiration for the painting. Because the, the action in the paintings were really once removed from probably what they really looked like. In this case, the "Exodus" was, of the paintings, that were all walking to camp, and they were leaving this idyllic village in the background and walking en masse off the canvas someplace. And, I always have to tell people that we did not walk to the camps. By the same token, it would have been -- it would not have appropriate in the 16th, 17th century to have buses, either. But there were various symbols that overlapped from painting to painting. For example, in "The Notification," the main figure in the foreground was supposed to be my grandfather reading the notification. And he appears in the "Exodus," second painting, as though he's still in disbelief reading this notification as everyone's moving to the camp. And then there are certain pieces of luggage that's in that painting that carries through to some of the other paintings. So, there are these overlaps from painting to painting.

AI: I also wondered if you would say a bit about the painting that has to do with No-No Boy. Because, and for people who don't know, of course, it's Frank Okada's brother, John Okada, who was the author of that book. And that, again, many people may not realize how controversial that was when it came out. So maybe you could say a bit about why you chose to use some of that --

RS: Well, I just, I had read No-No Boy years and years ago, and I decided when I did this series of paintings, that I would re-read it. And I'm glad I did, because it came back with, it brought back a lot of very vivid memories of the first time that I'd read the book. Because that was in my old neighborhood, on Jackson Street. And some of the late-night bars that they sort of hang in were the same bars that I used hang out in. Wa-Mei Club, Legion Club, and so on. And, and the frank that I, the fact that I knew Frank, also added to, added to the story. And so I, rather than deal with, with any of the sort of issues that were involved in the story, the controversy of the "no-no boys," and that, I sort of decided just to depict every main character that was in the story. And like so many artists, I was really sort of involved in the kind of picture that it would make in the end, and not really trying to take any particular political stance or anything. And so that painting had a very, very dramatic lighting to it, where it was very, it was a night scene outside, and there was a sort of very hot interior scene inside, and I placed everybody in there and sort of played around with that light. So in some ways, the painting is really about those formal kinds of things. Happened to be about, also about all of the characters in the book.

<End Segment 50> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.