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BT: I have a question. What you just described, your father was an artist.

FS: Yeah.

BT: So I'm really curious, do you think your dad had a big influence on your feelings toward design and architecture and the roots, your connection to Japanese culture?

FS: You know, my dad, the irony is I didn't think of him as an artist. Whatever he did, it was kind of around me, it surrounded my life. So it isn't... obviously, the art we collect, it's not because it's famous, it's because they are all people I know. And that's what it is. I'm surrounded by people I knew. Most of them are gone, but they've been a part of my life. And so I'm not sure because my dad... see, the depth of our tie to the real, the whole samurai roots, you know, which a lot of young people are looking for, that was already there, and he came knowing all that, the Shimazu clan, that's pretty big, and that we have a part of Japan named after our family. Well, he never tried to impose that on me. Yeah, I guess his message to me is that what he did is probably what my grandmother did, who I didn't know at all, and I didn't discover 'til five years ago or whatever, as a person. She must have instilled and raised him in a way that my dad kind of also molded my mother to raise me. It has to be that because there's nothing real distinctive. I might have danced with the sword a little bit and all that stuff, but it was nothing... there was no lecture, no discussion. I'm like a lot of kids are, I mean, I probably talked to my grandkids more than my own son. I think in my case, I really had a strong bond to Japan. But knowing it, that I'm American, I mean, it's hard... anyone that worked for Japan, and you see the culture, and you see the good side and the weak side, I call it. I'll not say the bad side. And we all brought it here, and many of the... it's hard to define it because everybody's a little different. Going back to the 442, there could be some of that spirit. And so maybe for me it's, I think he never... my dad never put that message out there in front of me. He never talked about camp, but he had this one drawing that was one of his favorite ones from Jerome. And it was always, it traveled with us all the time, it was always on the wall, no matter how dinky the situation might be. So that was his way of maybe reminding me the trail I took, and I didn't think of him as an artist 'til I shared some of the pictures that I had taken of his pictures or his drawings. I shared it with people, and everyone, some of my recent friends like Delphine (Hirasuna), who did a whole study on that kind of stuff, reminded me that my dad was an artist. So I'm not sure what...

BT: But do you think that experience with your dad, even though he didn't outright teach you these types of things, you learned it. Because that's through his way of raising you as a child, right, you learn all of that. So did that transfer to your work?

FS: Well, see, I don't use the terminology "work," right? That's what architects like to use, and writers. Yeah, the way I worked, I guess. It's more natural, I guess. This is what inspired me about the Native American culture that we killed, is that there was a natural process in which from young to old, there was a respect, all these positive things. And even Japan used to have it and it's losing it, to a degree. Yeah, I think my dad, it was never articulated in any way. I observed, I know what he did, I know how hard he worked, like most parents. But there was nothing that I can remember that I would say, I guess it's the whole person, the way he was, that influenced the way I am. Again, I can't put anything further on it because he could have talked about the samurai thing more, you know what I mean? Because we were pretty prominent in the southern part of Japan. I mean, it was hard to explain. Took me a long time to discover all this stuff.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.