<Begin Segment 1>

PW: So today is Saturday, October 14, 2023. We are at the studio of Robert Katsusuke Ogata in Fresno, California. My name is Patricia Wakida, and on camera we have Brad Shirakawa. So good morning, Mr. Ogata.

RO: Good morning.

PW: Let's start with your family history, personal family history. When and where were you born?

RO: I was actually born in a little farming area which is now Disneyland. And so my mother and father were, I think we were leasing some property and so on, and farming, and basically that's where I was.

PW: What was the actual name of the town?

RO: Oh, I can't remember. It's one of those things that was a quarter mile south of whatever, so on, so it was really, the closest part was probably where Anaheim is.

PW: And what was your full name given to you when you were born?

RO: Katsusuke Ogata.

PW: Did you choose the name Robert?

RO: Yes, I did, because in high school, it was a very interesting story, but as I was growing up as a young boy, when my mother and father were running the restaurant in Selma, and then two doors down from the restaurant was a pool hall. And my dad used to -- I mean, I was young enough where my dad would take me to the pool hall and so on, and I'd be basically hanging on his back while he's playing pool. And for some reason, I think the person who owned the pool hall was named Bob, I can't remember for sure. But anyway, so then, for some reason, I adopted that name and people, when I was going to school, they all called me Bob. And so that stuck with me for all these years, and yet, that's not my registered real name. And then when I got to a point where I had, was thinking about being a painter and so on, then I thought, well, I'm going to change it from Bob to... I didn't change it officially, but I just changed it to Robert.

PW: And what were your parents' names?

RO: My parents' name? Well, my father was named Toshio, and my mother was, I always knew her as Florence Fumiko, but only by Florence, because in the restaurant then, she is the one that was then greeting customers and taking care of the business and so on. So she had to basically, then, find a name that would be appropriate I think for most people, Caucasians that would come in. Everybody called her... well, where she worked, then everybody called her Florence. I've never asked her why she chose that name.

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<Begin Segment 2>

PW: And when you were born and you were living in Southern California, your family had a business?

RO: I think they were strawberry farmers at the time. And, of course, at that time, I know very little about that period in their lives and so on, and how they progressed, and eventually came up to the Central Valley to go ahead and start a restaurant.

PW: And where did they do that, which town?

RO: This was in Selma. In Selma at that time, the Asian businesses were all on West Front Street, and West Front Street was where then, early on, where the 99 highway would run right in front of the businesses and so on as it came through the small town of Selma. So then eventually, of course, then over the years, the highway was moved progressively to where it is today, so it's moved several times, actually.

PW: I realized I forgot to ask you what your birthdate is. When were you exactly... what date were you born?

RO: Well, I was born, like I said, this little farm near Anaheim in 1934.

PW: What date?

RO: February the 16th.

PW: February the 16th.

RO: Yeah.

PW: So how old were you when you moved to the Central Valley, to Selma?

RO: You know, I guess I must have been probably not more than about five years, four or five years old, and so on, eventually. Because as I remember then that my grandmother was living with us in this little restaurant, and then we lived behind the restaurant, and so I remember then being held my grandmother. And then that was my early memories about them being in the restaurant.

PW: Can you describe what it looked like?

RO: Oh, yeah. It was actually a restaurant that was owned by another, I think another Chinese family and so on, because initially the neon sign that was posted on front of the restaurant was "K and K Chop Suey," and so when my mother and father took over the restaurant, they left the neon sign there. And so we were always known as the K and K, but eventually K and K Caf�. Because a lot of other Japanese farmers would come and they would then be able to come and have udon and so on, because they wanted to change the menu, then they'll be able to go ahead in an association with the other Japanese Americans that were here.

PW: So was the menu mostly Japanese American?

RO: Well, no, it was actually, I don't know how my father learned how cook these things, but he was cooking chow mein and chop suey and things of that nature, egg fu young and so on, but it was very, very limited menu. But also in addition to that was, of course, udon and things that the other Japanese people would come and enjoy.

PW: Do you remember what that childhood house looked like or the home that you lived with your parents?

RO: All I remember was that the restaurant was in the front, and then right behind there, where the cooking area was and so on, that I remember there was a large, round oak table. And this is kind of where we kind of hung out as young people and so on. So we never, the only time that I think that I was involved in the front of the restaurant is those hours in which there was nobody there, so I would just be able to go in and hang out there and so on. Some friends would come over, and that's where we were basically, as my earliest memories were that.

PW: And did you have siblings?

RO: Yes, I had an older brother, his name was George Hiroshi, and then I had a younger brother and his name was... I'm sorry. Keijiro. I was going to say Keibo, we call, everybody called him Keibo. That was his name, and Dick was again a name that I think was adopted by him, Kejiro.

PW: Did you guys eat in the restaurant? Like is that where you would have your meals?

RO: My whole life revolved around the restaurant and so on. Everything from going to school, coming back, and home, and that's where I would go to and so on after school. It was a very important part of my life. And even though I'd barely remember things about the restaurant, you remember things like, I remember skating on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant as a young man, young boy. But other than that, it was just, not until the evacuation notice and so on, that I remember.

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<Begin Segment 3>

PW: So I understand that your father was an Issei immigrant, and your mother was a Nisei.

RO: That's correct.

PW: Tell me a little bit about, let's start with your father. Where was your father born?

RO: He was born in Fukuoka, which is the province, I don't know exactly what town and so on, because again, he comes from a farming community.

PW: And do you know much about his upbringing in Japan or the family in Japan?

RO: Did not know much at all until we had revisited. We went back that way because of a desire to go. Because my youngest daughter then had spent a year abroad in Japan, and so she was a junior, she wasn't an exchange student, she was just a student that applied for, to experience another country, and so she chose Japan and so on. And so that was then her initial contact in with her connection and also connection with Sandy, my wife, and so on, that we just made a decision to go back and then visit. So it was basically that, and then traveling then to that area and so on, and finding my relatives that were living there. The town was called... what was it called? No, but then when we went back to the little town [inaudible voice off camera.] So anyway, again, as I'm aging and so on, I'm not remembering as I much as I did in the past.

PW: Was your mother's family from the same prefecture?

RO: No, they were from Hiroshima.

PW: Tell me a little bit about your mother's side of the family. What do you know...

RO: I don't know a lot. I know that although we have done some research and so on, but it's a lot of information that I had really kind of forgotten about and so on, so I've been dependent on Sandy to go ahead and keep me abreast of things. Again, there are so many things that you have come in contact with, but then you have a tendency to forget those things because your life is just so full of so much other information and so on.

PW: What was your mother's maiden name?

RO: I was... I'm thinking now. Horita, I'm sorry, thank you.

PW: No, that's fine.

RO: Horita, yeah.

PW: And do you know where she was born in the United States?

RO: In the state of Washington. I don't know if it's... I don't remember the town and so on, but it was in the state of Washington.

PW: And do you know what kind of work her family did? Again, her parents must have immigrated, and they're in Washington. Do you know what kind of work they did?

RO: I have no idea. I don't know if they were in the laundry business or if they were whatever and so on, farmers.

PW: And did she have any siblings?

RO: Yes. In fact, she was then, she had two older brothers, and then she was the next in the family, and then Kenji was the youngest, there were four.

PW: Do you remember the names of the, all the names?

RO: Yeah. The oldest one was... Dick was his... I can't remember his last name (Horita). In fact, he had then, I think when her father then was going to immigrant back into Japan and so on, I don't know how, but her oldest brother, when they stopped off in Honolulu or whatever, he decided to stay there instead of going back to Japan, and he eventually married and started a family there.

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<Begin Segment 4>

PW: Do you know how your parents met?

RO: You know, I think it's one of these things where then the term baishakunin.

PW: Baishakunin.

RO: Yes. And here is this older man who was unmarried and so on, and then somehow, I don't know how the connection is, through how he eventually hooked up with my mother.

PW: Do you know where they were married?

RO: I'm assuming they were married in Southern California.

PW: What were your parents like? Just personality or what they did?

RO: [Laughs] You know, my father was typically an immigrant and so on. We spoke to him in English and he spoke back to us in Japanese and so on. And the same thing with my mother, even though my mother spoke English, and then they find that the three boys, we understood what they were saying to us in Japanese, but we always answered back in English. So you kind of understand some Japanese from hearing it and having these conversations, and you know when they're talking to you and what they're saying. But then if you're not using the language as much as you should, you'll find that then there are these moments in which you just did the best that you can.

PW: Did they stay in, did your family stay in Selma for your whole childhood?

RO: Yeah.

PW: Were they part of the Japanese American community?

RO: Yes, absolutely.

PW: Church or temple?

RO: Well, I think it was through the restaurant. Yeah, I think it was through the restaurant and so on. And again, as a very young boy at that time, I remember then these are the kind of memories that I have as a young boy. But after the restaurant closed, there was always then a lot of young Japanese men, who were youngish, I guess, who had come to the restaurant if it was closed, and there was always a card game in the back. I mean, it's a very, very typical thing I find, that over the years, that's taken place. So that's what I remember, is the fact that then there were these, after closing activities, which were basically gambling, I guess.

PW: Did they close before the war?

RO: They closed... well, no. They were open until the internment... what's the word I want to use?

PW: Evacuation day?

RO: Orders and so on, yeah, then they eventually closed the restaurant. In fact, I remembered then that moment in which we had to close the restaurant down and so on, and my mother and father telling me that we're going to be moving. And so that's another story, of course, is that, this is after then, but yes, that's where my memories became very, very clear and very vivid.

PW: Before we move over to that, because that's definitely a question, I'm still curious about the Japanese American community in Selma at that time. Did your family celebrate Oshogatsu, New Year's?

RO: Oh, yes, absolutely.

PW: Boy's Day?

RO: Because I remember then, I remember I don't know whose backyard it was, but then I remember the pounding of mochi. Yeah, there were people that would come over. So there was that, again, not specific who they were, but there was this activity that I found that was very interesting. Then I just kind of assumed, okay, this is what we all did and celebrating New Year's Day.

PW: Did your family go to any church or temple?

RO: You know, because I think back in church, I don't think they were regular members. They were members, but I think they were probably supportive of the church, but then not necessarily going. My mother wanted us to go up and go to a Caucasian Christian church, and so this was something that was very, very different for us, so then, in fact, the early memories about then, about going to kindergarten and so on, that then the relationship that I had with them, a lot of Caucasian kids. But I think it was basically then that we were kind of encouraged to go to a Methodist church which is close to where the, that was in town, and we could walk to there, but then my mother and father didn't go, but then all the boys went. And that lasted for a while.

PW: What did you three boys do for fun?

RO: Run around like kids do, and I remember then close to where the restaurant was, was a, there was a canal, and it was usually empty, but it was very typical, the canals that would run through town to send water to the farming community and so on, so there were periods in which then we would, that was the place that we could go and hang out and whatever young kids do and so on, play Cowboys and Indians, whatever. [Laughs]

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<Begin Segment 5>

PW: Where did you go to elementary school?

RO: In Selma.

PW: And you said it was mostly Caucasian?

RO: Oh, absolutely. In kindergarten I remember, because the school was separate from where the elementary school was. So then at that time, as I remember back, I think there was one other Caucasian person who had then attended school, too. Even though that you are a member of a class and so on, your association with people becomes very small even though you remember other people. So I can't remember if he was Japanese or Chinese, think back, might have been Japanese. But that's the same thing that you go through in school. You connect with these people, but the connection is very, very limited.

PW: Do you remember any family friends that your parents were especially close to?

RO: Oh, absolutely, yeah. And these were people then that had businesses in Selma. My father, if he bought a car, he would go then to the Oldsmobile dealership which is, what's the name? Anyway. Otomo, yeah.

PW: What was Selma like? What was Selma known for?

RO: It was basically just a farming community. It was a very, very small town. It had an elementary school and then it had one high school. You felt very comfortable being able... in fact, my parents, I had to walk then from, as a kindergartener, they wouldn't take me, they were running the restaurant. So they walked us over there first time and so on and said, "Well, this is the path you're following." I remember those times when you had to across the tracks and you're walking to this small little area 'til you'd gotten into this school, but it was something that you just got to know and you felt completely safe, and being able to walk. So I don't know, as a young boy, I'm walking along and so on, sitting on the tracks. Dumb things that you do as a young kid, but you felt very, very safe, very comfortable. I never went to school with my... I didn't have to go with my older brother, you just went by yourself.

PW: Were either of your parents, culturally or artistically, inspired in any way?

RO: Later on I've come to know that my father of all people, for instance, as we moved into another house and so on, that he did, because of his love of gardening and so on, he had a wonderful garden, and then the growing of chrysanthemums. So he did a lot of the flower arranging in the house, which I just accepted that that's what he did. So later on in life, he realized that then mostly done by women and so on, and but it was something that he did.

PW: How about your mother?

RO: And my mother was just, she was involved in cooking and trying to do all the things that mothers do, taking care of the house and laundry and this and that and so on. She had her friends, then she eventually would have, the women's club and so on would get together and they would end up doing everything from baking and preparing for New Year's and whatever. So her life beyond then, the family was very, very limited other than a few Japanese friends that she had, until later.

PW: When you say the women's club, was this through the Buddhist church? Did Selma have a Buddhist church?

RO: Yes, it was a connection, because there was also a Christian church there, and a Buddhist church, held actually in the same building. And so then the connection wasn't that she had then, but with friends that were...

PW: Did Selma celebrate Obon?

RO: No, we didn't. No they didn't. I don't remember that, I don't remember that. I don't think there were enough. I think then that the farming communities like Parlier, Del Rey, Fowler and so on, Sanger, they had a larger community and so on, so then basically then the people that lived in Selma, there were a few people that owned businesses like the Kajitani�s and the Tori�s grocery store and so on. But there were very, very few, so that our association with, and the farming community was by word of mouth, when they came to have udon and so on. So as a young boy, you just kind of recognized names of people. And yet you never even paid attention to who they were.

PW: Did your family ever come to Fresno, Japantown, or Chinatown?

RO: Oh, yes. Because we didn't own a car, and so we would then go to the Greyhound bus depot and then ride the Greyhound. I remember because my mother and father would say, you need to go ahead and clean up a little bit and dress with a nice ironed shirt and so on, and we'd ride the bus up to Fresno and we would eventually go to, what's it called, Chinatown, when we'd then go to have Chinese food and we would do shopping and so on, and I remember the small Japanese-run, Japanese American-run restaurants were very limited. So yeah, very, very few memories of that, just certain things that we did. It was a big deal, I guess, coming to Fresno.

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<Begin Segment 6>

PW: So now I want to shift over, because about, when you were about eight years old, I believe, is when, it was December 1941 when Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, started the war. So you said that, do you have any memory of this actual day?

RO: I became very conscious and aware of the fact that then because my mother and father were talking about the end of the war, but you don't pay much attention to that. So until then we got the notice, and my mother says, well, we're going to be packing up and leaving and we're going to be moving and so on. And I remember then one of the things in February that my mother bought me a BB gun. It was my prized possession, this BB gun. And so then she says, "Well, you're not going to be able to take that to where we're going." And I was really kind of alarmed by that. She says, "Well, what can do is probably give it to your best friend." And I thought, okay, well, I can do that. So my best friend was, his family ran a hardware store, and so then I remember walking over there with my BB gun and talking to this friend. I said, "We're going to be leaving and we can't take this, so I would like you to have it." And it was just a very faint memory until we came back. But anyway, so that was what I did.

It's very, very interesting, so then as we were getting ready and trying to decide, then my mother and father packing up suitcases and cardboard boxes and whatever. And because the train that will take us into the relocation area and so on, because we didn't have to come... my mother and father may have had to go to Fresno and register, I'm not quite sure. But I remembered that the, because the train came along the, I guess it was the Santa Fe tracks and so on, right in front of the restaurant. And so as a result, here was this... I remember then after closing of the restaurant and so on, and packing bags and so on, and looking out the front window of the restaurant and seeing this olive drab train just there. And then all these people that were lined up there on the other side of the highway waiting then with their bags and cardboard boxes and so on, and then a few military people, and then, of course, a lot of plainclothes people and so on, which obviously were probably FBI. So then I remember walking over there, and then we were given these manila tags and so on that had the identification for the family, and we were told to put in on the button and so on, and eventually then we all were loaded on the train. And so we were told not to put up the shades and so on, the shades had to be kept down. But then the fact that we were all there, there were hundreds of people there that were going to be transported by this train. They must have had probably five or eight cars and so on. But it was very interesting. And it was kind of an adventure, like, because I wasn't quite sure where we were going. I had no idea, and they were saying, "Well, we're going to be riding the train for a day or so." So we accept that get on the train, and you just take off. As a young boy, everything is different, everything is new, everything is kind of exciting.

And so then I remember this long train ride, and one of the things I also remember is because you were not allowed to look out the window because the shades were always drawn, until the train stopped in Arizona. And I remember, because we were told we were going to be getting off at that point, I remember the train stopping. And I looked underneath the shades, and it was this little depot. My most important memory was then seeing all these Native American women that had blankets that were laid out in front of them with all these items that they had made, Indian jewelry, pots and so on. So I thought, oh my goodness, where is this? And we realized that Arizona, we're in Arizona. But then we were loaded into army trucks and then shipped off to the site, which was probably a couple hours away.

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<Begin Segment 7>

PW: You haven't said which camp you ended up in.

RO: Yeah, Gila. Yeah. Canal Camp. In Gila, there were two camps, Canal Camp and Butte Camp, and Canal Camp was the one that was, I guess, associated because there was a canal that ran on one side, and then a dike on the other side. And then Butte Camp was two or three miles up in the upper elevation.

PW: Again, you were old enough to have distinct memories, like you said.

RO: Oh, yes, from that point on.

PW: So tell me more. What were your impressions of the full camp, but also your barracks? Do you remember which barrack your family lived?

RO: Sure, yeah, 24-7-A. Because as we were loaded in these army trucks and so on, and then all the luggage and so forth was brought later on. But I remember then taking this bumpy, dusty ride in these trucks, we were in the back of that thing, and eventually got to this point. And we were unloading, and so all these buildings were lined up, row after row after row. In fact, there were places in which they had to have boards that were put over... not ditches, but where were they were putting in water lines and things of that nature and so on, so then you had cross over that to get into the camp, but there was a fence that you had to go by. But then for some reason, we were assigned in to 24-7-A and that was my address. This building was very new, very, very new, and trying to settle into this building, which had four apartments. And there was no wall in the building itself so I remember my father then, because there were blankets and so on, putting up a line to separate where the bedroom area is and then the living area was, or whatever it was called, it was just a space. Because basically then we didn't have running water, we had to eat at the mess hall and go to the washroom to bathe. So that became my home, it was a very, very exciting time. Because, again, you really did not understand what was happening other than the fact that then the war has caused the evacuation of all Japanese Americans from the West Coast.

PW: Did your family stay together a lot?

RO: Oh, yeah. And what happens in a place like this where you have then a situation where, because you get to know the people in the barracks that you have, the four families and so on, and so then since we all had to walk down to the middle of the block to go to the mess hall, and we had to line up there and so on. What families did was then they would then kind of stake out one of the picnic benches that this is where we would eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, and every family basically did that and it was just kind of understood. So yeah, you line up, metal trays, you walk through and so on. And the cooks were all Japanese American, Japanese and Japanese American and so on, and you weren't quite sure what you were eating because you're so used to your mother and father's cooking, and there were these people that are cooking this other food which tasted a little different. And I remember as a young boy that I always asked for just Jell-o to put on the tray, and then we would then welcome her to our little table, and that's for three meals a day.

PW: Did your parents work while they were in camp?

RO: Yes. In fact, I don't remember when, but after I think about the first year or so, my mother got a job, I think she was working at the mess hall and so on, sixteen dollars a month, I guess, is what they were paid and so on. And eventually, then, there was a request, an order by the government that they needed young men to be able to go and harvest and plant crops in the Northwest, Idaho and that area. Because, of course, the young men had all been, gone to war and so on, so my father then applied for this and so on, and I remember he had an ID and so on. I mean, I don't even remember him taking off, but I remember he was gone for months at a time. So then the only memory I have of that time was then there was an ID card that he had with his photograph on it. So you get along and you go to school and you had teachers that were hired to teach. You were in this barrack with long benches for desks, and everybody in the place looked like you. [Laughs]

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<Begin Segment 8>

PW: What did you do to pass the time?

RO: We'd run around, just run around and just do things. It's very interesting because after the first year, because we were restricted to then how far we could move within the block itself, and then right across the street from us was... then they made a baseball diamond with a backstop and so on. And so I remember then going to watch baseball games and so on. But other than that, because the dike was basically then the boundary that was one side of the camp, and I think it was built by the Corps of Engineers because, during flooding in the desert, you had huge amounts of water that would come rushing down, so they had to go, I guess, in the construction, the camp, they had to provide some kind of a barrier, so this dike was built there. And it was probably about twenty feet high. So we knew that was our boundary, and so we would run up on the top of the dike and so on and this is where we would play. And then we got to be a little more ambitious and said, "Well, let's go on the other side of the dike." And I don't remember who my friends were, two or three friends, so we did that. And we said, "Well, let's build a little fort," and here as a young boy, I guess we could do that. But you're digging in the sand, you're digging in a place that's probably not more than eighteen inches deep, and we would scrounge cardboard and boards, and cover it and put branches on it and so on, and would crawl in there just like young boys would do. But it was very interesting, I can talk about this a little bit later, but I'll reserve that...

PW: We'll come back to that.

RO: Yeah, right. But other than that, I remember things like my father then, he would walk out in the desert, after they kind of relaxed the security and so on, even though there were still the guard towers and people in the guard towers and so on. But he would walk out in the desert like a lot of all these men, and find things that they could do, so there was, pick up pieces of wood and so on. And in one case, I remember then that I don't know how it happened, but then apparently he had killed a rattlesnake. And he had brought it back, and I remember then he had skinned the rattlesnake and then hung it on the clothesline to dry. And as a young boy, I was impressed with this, because this thing was moving. And I think back and I never asked him why he did this, but I think what it was is just a very typical kind of Japanese remedies and so on, that you take them and then you allow this to dry and you powder it and then use it for medicinal purposes or whatever. Because we certainly did not eat the snake, but it was basically allotted. [Laughs] Again, the spot memories of things that took place.

PW: Were there other family members that were with you at Gila?

RO: No. Because there were people from different parts of California, because they were not necessarily from Selma and then the surrounding communities and so on. So people that we met, there were some people, like, for instance, Del Rey, Parlier, whatever. But other than that, your family and your relationships with people is within that very small area. I can remember then that the block had a lot of buildings and so on, and it was even where the mess hall was was a barrack for all the bachelors. But so, again, that's another story because I remember then a lot of Caucasian men in suits would come every so often, and they would take people from where the bachelors were and then take them off. So I'm assuming then that that was the... I don't know if it had to do with the... what's the word I want to use? We had to sign the order to, they were called "no-no boys," would not sign allegiance to the United States, so that maybe these were people that were taken then to Tule Lake. But I remember very distinctly, because they were seeing these people that walked, I mean, they were not like us, they were Caucasians dressed in suits. And they would every so often come and round up people. But I don't remember that being, taking place within the rest of the community other than that bachelor headquarters and so on.

I remember, of course, then because they had, it was a stand, it was a wooden, not a grandstand, but a wooden area that was raised up and so on, and they would have a temporary screen. So they would show movies there then, and then you had to take your chair, and you walk over to watch movies. And I remember these 50-gallon barrels that were placed around the area that we lit to go and provide heat as you're watching, because Arizona evenings would get very, very cold. So then this stage that was there was the place where activities took place. I remember young Japanese American men then coming there, and in their army uniforms, United States Army uniforms, and they were then asked to then walk up to the stage, and they were announcing the names of these people that after basic training were going to be ready to ship out to different areas of the world, whether Europe or the Far East. So again, that's a memory that I remembered, because again, because these men that were dressed in army uniforms, having to come back then to the camp to say goodbye to their parents. What a strange thing that you have to enter into this secure area before you would find it. The relationship between security and allegiance and all that was very important at that time.

PW: Did you feel...

RO: I couldn't understand that. I couldn't understand that. I knew that we were at war, but then again, what's my allegiance to Japan? I'm an American. And so then you can't figure that out, as a young boy, why are we having this war with Japan? Because they bombed Pearl Harbor, and da-da-da. It didn't mean a lot to me. Because, again, your association is very limited to the community that you grew up in. And so then you have this other country which is then native to your father, but yet, other than that, you have no concept of what the rest of the world is like at that point.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

PW: So I know that your family actually stayed for a long time. People didn't just leave, you had young children, so your parents stayed together, and you guys left towards the, almost towards the end of the war.

RO: Yes.

PW: Right? Where did you guys go, and do you know anything about that, like about the leaving part or packing?

RO: Again, it's again like you get the message and so on, that we realized that because, I think that the security in the camp became progressively less. It wasn't as strict as when we first got there. I can't even remember even seeing American soldiers in the guard towers anymore, I think they were still there. But again, when we got the notice, again, only because of them, the word that got out, my mother and father, and then your schoolmates and whatever that were going to be going and were going to be let out. So then my mother told me that we were going to go back then to Selma. I thought, "Well, okay, I know Selma. I remember Selma." So then, yeah, we came back, and I'm just thinking about that, how did we get from the camp back to Selma? I guess it must have been by train and I guess I don't remember. So, yeah, at that point, so then as we... and I think what had happened was that then the people that ran the Kajitani Grocery Store were very helpful in a sense. Because they had this building that they owned and lived in, so that was basically closed up. Whereas within the restaurant, it had been leased or rented out, it was no longer part of our lives. So I remember that my mother and father were renting a, basically a tin shack that was on the other side of the tracks, and that's where we were living after we came back, and then going with them to go and pick grapes and peaches and things of that nature, I never did that. But then that's what you did to earn a living because, again, they had no income. Again, I don't know how long they did that, and until then, they realized that they could go ahead and become involved in the restaurant business again.

PW: Did you feel tension coming back to California?

RO: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I remember my older brother and I, after we came back, because they said, "Oh, yeah, this is the town we grew up." So we walked downtown, which we knew, and then people would drive by, give us the middle finger and so on, we would walk into a little place that we used to, like a drugstore, nobody would wait on us. And so we thought, "Oh, my goodness, what is this about?" Because we came back to Selma in August, so school was out. And my mother said, "Well, it rolls around, you're going to have to go to school." And I thought, oh, I don't want to go to school. I mean, look at the tension we felt from coming back, that it was not the same community. Same town, but it seemed very, very different. So I told my mom, "I don't want to go to school," and she said, "You don't have a choice. You don't have a choice." So then as a result, I remember then one of my best friends, the guy that I gave the BB-gun to, we never talked to each other. It was just, that was it. And again, he didn't make any overtures to me and I didn't to him. You just kind of feel the tension between them, people, so then you go to class and everybody in the class is white except for one or two... you know, later on, as we went to junior high school, then I noticed that some of their kids that were coming from some of the surrounding areas.

PW: Was this true before you left for camp in terms of --

RO: No.

PW: -- after the war had been declared, and you were still in school, correct?

RO: No. After the war was declared, right, but then we left that summer. So then there was that period of time in which then we realized that there were all these posters that were set up in the telephone poles about the evacuation orders and so on. But I just... it seemed that there wasn't as much tension the few months there from the war. It seemed that things were fairly... I think it was after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and then what had happened, that period of time between that and the time in which we got the notices that we would be evacuated. So there was that period that slowly progressed, then realized that then we were going to have to move, because you felt that you were, the people that you knew in town, there were a few kids, no matter what, they were in the same position as I was, Caucasian kids. They didn't think anything about the war other than that we were at war with Japan and whatever. We saw each other just as classmates, as friends, and so you maintained that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

PW: What about for your parents? So I understand they were doing more agricultural work, there were itinerant workers and harvesting, since they didn't have the restaurant, what were they doing in the years, let's say, from 1945 to 1950?

RO: Oh, from there, yes, after we came back and so on. What had happened was that then, after we found that there was another chance to run, open another restaurant and so on, and what had happened was that then the highway that was initially the original highway that came through the town of Selma had moved over a block. And so then there was a row of businesses, and there was this particular building, which was a restaurant, and I can't remember who owned the restaurant. But there was a gas station there that was occupied by another Japanese American man, and we became very good friends, obviously, because that's where I hung out. So then this restaurant was now a place that we started as a second restaurant.

PW: What was the name of the restaurant?

RO: It was the same one, K and K. They just kept the name, yeah.

PW: Do you remember the name of the man that owned the gas station?

RO: Yeah, Mike Iwatsubo. He had a younger brother, but they were both in the army. But anyway, but again, it was one of these places, because there were so few places where young Japanese men could hang out, and so we found that there were people coming there just to the gas station, just hanging out there. And eventually they would come over and just walked next door to where our restaurant was. And because we had pinball machines, that was set in the section of the restaurant, and the young men would come there and play pinball machines and would just hang out there. So it was, again, another place where people would meet, and yet, they were people that that's how I got to know them, otherwise I had no idea what their backgrounds were, other than the fact that that relationship that you have with hanging out and walking over there to the gas station and sitting in the office, I may have washed the windows of cars, I don't know. But it was a place, that was your environment.

PW: And the clientele was mixed whites and some Japanese Americans?

RO: Yeah. In fact, then the next, across the street from us was a lumberyard, and this had been in Selma for a lot of years, and it happened then to be run by the family of a boy who I went to kindergarten with, so we were good friends at that time, had remained friends all this time. And I used to go to the lumberyard to hang out with him as well, the Shawntz.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

PW: And then so you continued going to public schools?

RO: Yeah. And after finishing grammar school, we had to go then to a junior high school, and that was a ways away. And so I remember then that still, during grammar school, those were years I can't remember at all who my teachers were and whatever happened and so on. Because it was a very strange period of trying to adjust, and so then when we eventually went to the junior high school, and I remember then being there in the front of the school where all the kids were there, excited about the beginning of a new school year and whatever. I remember the principal coming out and speaking to the group about where you should go, what class, and da-da-da, then the bell rang and everybody rushed off. I was not familiar with the school, so then I eventually found the room that I was supposed to go. And I walked in, and, of course, by then, everybody was seated. And you walk in there, and you're looking around, and you're seeing this classroom of people that were all Caucasians except for one other Japanese American kid. And so I gave the teacher my, I guess that was a registration slip or something, I gave it to her, and there was a seat that was a seat near the back. And so I started to walk over to take a seat in the front, and then I heard this person say, "Hey, come back here." I didn't know who it was, you just see these people, you just see a sea of people. So I happened to make that decision, choice, to walk back there and take a seat back there. And then the other Japanese American kid had taken that other seat in the front. It so happens then, from that point on, I had this association with these kids, all Caucasian kids, that became, we were so tight, and it was just amazing that I had come to understand then that who they were on the campus, they were kind of the big man on the campus. And I don't even remember who we even said, "Hey, come back here." And so from that point on I never had a problem with my identity or with the association with the war. Because I'm sure there were kids that had fights and this and that. So there was this kind of built-in protection that you have, an association that you had with these kids, and that followed all the years through high school and even today then there are a few that I associate with, I mean, through retirement programs and so on.

PW: What were the names of the junior high school and high school you went to?

RO: What was... the grammar school was called Garfield Elementary, and then the junior high school was... what was it called? I know it. I know it, but I can't remember it. I can't remember it (Roosevelt Jr. High).

PW: And the high school was Selma High?

RO: Selma High School. [Laughs]

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

PW: I'm going to ask one more question before we take a break.

RO: Sure.

PW: So now you're like a teenager. I'm kind of curious, what were your obsessions? What were you into?

RO: Well, when you're in high school, you're taking then the classes that are offered to you and you take English and math and this and that. And you had to take either a home-ec class or an art class. I remember then that the home-ec teacher was the art teacher, and then in the classroom, then, they had a desk and so on. And you didn't give the appearance of an art school, art classroom and so on, but there was a row of books lined up on one side. And the teacher says, "I want you to go ahead and take a book." And these were these traditional, what they called Walter Foster How to Draw books. Animals, horses, humans and so on. And she said, "Well, just pick a book and take a piece of paper, go back to your desk and then copy that." So that was my art training. Other than that, then, you took a class in, you were, of course, then involved in athletics and so on, it was another way, because you were with this tight group of people. And so you played basketball, football, and you ran in track and so on. Because the school was so small, you knew everybody by that time. So then... what was I going to say? I lost my train of thought. So anyway, that was...

PW: What about books or music?

RO: Well, in fact, one of things, I think back, I said, "How did this happen?" But as I was a sophomore, and they were choosing then the officers for the sophomore class, and someone nominated me. And so then, of course, I happened to be part of this very hip group, so eventually then I was chosen as president of the sophomore class. What do you do? I'm not that kind of a person. But again, that kind of thing happens, and all of a sudden you realize that all these things you've tried to do to be two hundred percent American, because you're trying to go and change that identity after you'd come back from camp. You don't want to look like who you are. And so you're trying to do everything necessary to kind of move beyond that point, and so you get yourself involved in athletics and the administration, the yearbook, all these things that gave you a place within the school. Because during lunch hour and so on, there was always a small group of friends that used to go to this hangout, but going and having lunch together or sitting around the campus, the same group of people that I had known for this period, as well as some of the kids that I knew in kindergarten. Finally they came back to a point where they, I remembered them and they became very friendly. I remember then that at a retirement get-together, the class would get together and they would say, "Hey, Robert, you remember where we used to go to dance?" I said, "No, I didn't do that." And they didn't realize at that time then that the Asian kids, as few as there were, never attended the prom or things of that nature. And so then these other Caucasian kids, they said they didn't realize that I did not partake in that. My association with the community was the beginning of school, end of school. End of school, I went back to the restaurant and worked at the restaurant.

And I remembered then, when I was a member of the football team, because at that time there was a B class and A class, a difference in age and height and weight and so on. So we played right after school, so then I would tell my mother, I said, "I'm playing football," so then I'd go and play a football game, and then get dressed and come back and work at the restaurant. I didn't go back and hang out with the rest of the class, I went to the varsity game or whatever's on. So my life was very limited at that time, and there were kids that would come to the restaurant, "Hey, Bob, let's go out." "No, I can't, I'm working at the restaurant." That's the commitment that you make as a family member, because the three boys, that's what we did, we grew up doing that. Washing dishes, and eventually they were waiting on tables, doing the cash register and all of that. It was my identity after school. [Laughs]

PW: So I dare not ask if you dated in high school?

RO: No, no.

PW: Your mom and dad had you at the restaurant?

RO: Right. In fact, I remember even after graduating, this other very good friend of mine, I thought that after graduation I had no desire to do, I had no direction of what I want to do. And so then this young, good friend of mine says, "Hey, let's go to college." And that was the last thing I wanted to even think about doing, but there was Reedley College, and there was a bus that came and picked up people. They said, "Okay, yeah, we'll do that." So then we went to Reedley College with a lot of other classmates that I graduated from Selma, from the school. So that was then my introduction then to what art was like, was beginning to look like. I had no idea what that was, and so I had this art class, and I was, "Oh, is this what this is about?" And the instructor I had was, introduced us to a lot of things that we had no idea that was a part of what the art was about, because we didn't learn that. So this was the early beginning of my art, the early beginning of my art training. And from that point on, that seemed to then propel me, and say, yes, I want to continue on with my career and transferred to Fresno State and got my degree. Circumstances and so on, I don't know, just happened.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

PW: So my question was, I'm curious to hear about your involvement in the Junior YBA. When were you active?

RO: Well, again, this is very interesting as I mentioned about the fact that the Japanese American kids were basically, they were their own entity, group of people and so on. Almost never associated after hours with the general population, especially in high school. None of them went to a prom, so then as a result, this was kind of understood, and so as a result then, we would then get together and say, "Hey, let's have a dance." So we would go to the, ask the church if we could use their facilities, and there might be maybe six or eight couples. But it was trying to then behave in a way where this is a natural thing for young people to do, but it so happened it was basically then an issue of isolation from the rest of the community. This is why that, then again, my Caucasian friend says, "Well, gee, don't you remember we went to the dance?" So as a result then, as a result then, that association extended then to sports. And so at that time there was a young Buddhist league basketball group that played at Edison High School in Fresno. And so there were people that would be picked from different places to have a team. Fresno obviously had more Japanese Americans, so then they had a team. We had fewer, in fact, we had a young Chinese kid play for our team because we needed another man. And it became something we did on Sunday afternoons. Our team went to play this, and there was a particular league in whatever spot. So it was the organized physical activity, and I think there was basically, other than what we did on school.

PW: Was your parents at all socially active with the church?

RO: No. And again, as I say, I think that if anybody was active, it was certainly my mother because of her association with other young mothers and women. So that's why they had the women's league, women's group and so on. And so as a result, that's how she became friends with various groups, and so she did not identify herself as being Christian or Buddhist, because we did not attend either one of those churches.

PW: You mentioned to me that your father was very close friends with the Japanese American gentlemen who owned the grocery store?

RO: Right.

PW: What was his name?

RO: His name was... what was the first name? His name was Kajitani, was it Yoshi? Oh, I can't remember for sure.

PW: Do you remember much about Mr. Kajitani?

RO: Oh, yeah, I remember them. He and... because our restaurant was just right next door, so as a result, I often found myself going over and walking in the store because I knew then their daughter, their daughter was a little bit younger than I was, and also then the boy in the family was the same age as my older brother. So it was a couple years older. So it was someone you hang around with, played with and so on. I remember there was a... I can't remember if it was the Fourth of July or something where then we both dressed up. She was dressed up as a young pioneer woman, and I dressed up as a cowboy with a hat and a holster and chaps. And I remember there was a photograph taken, again, that association, you think, "That's kind of strange." But as a part of the community and taking part in it, you just do what you do with the people you know, you know best.

PW: And the Kajitani family also went to Gila River?

RO: I think they did but I'm not quite sure what block they were in. Because, again, my association with people were basically next door, were the people that were in my barrack. Later on, I realized that then they... the author.

PW: Masumoto?

RO: Masumoto, yeah. I don't remember him, but then I remember the family. After a while, then we got to know him better.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

PW: So to reorient ourselves, we're now, you're graduating high school. What year did you graduate?

RO: In 1951.

PW: '51. And you are now at Reedley High School?

RO: Reedley College.

PW: I'm sorry, Reedley College, where you were getting your first exposure to art education. Were there any influential teachers specifically?

RO: Well, as I remember, I think there was only one teacher. I don't remember taking a class from any other teachers, and his name was Erikson, I don't remember the first name. And he was a very traditional watercolorist, which is very typical of the valley and so on because it was not a lot of really modern or contemporary art taking place here in the valley. So then he kind of taught us about techniques and composition and so on, which you wouldn't normally learn. So then that was transferred to then when I went to Fresno State, and when I transferred to Fresno State, and again, in Fresno State there were, let's see, one, two, three, four, there were five art teachers at Fresno State at that time. And so you took a class, because I was declared as an art major, so then you took the classes that were required to fulfill that major, and everything from art history to photography to ceramics to painting, drawing.

PW: That's such a bold decision already. How many years did you start, how many years were you studying at Reedley?

RO: At Reedley? Two.

PW: Two years, and then you transferred.

RO: Right.

PW: I mean, I'm impressed, as an artist myself, that you already knew you wanted to do an art major.

RO: You're right. I never expected, even thought about doing that, as I had mentioned after high school, I had no idea about then a career in art or whatever. I thought, well, then, I'd just go to the service because that's what people did at that time, but it was that introduction to that Reedley College class that kind of created a spark and so on. And I continued on to Fresno State, and of course, at Fresno State, there was years of exposure. The number of classes that you took, and there were all these like-minded people doing all these wonderful, wonderful things. So that was consuming, really consuming for me.

PW: So who was in the art department at the time? Who was teaching and what was the vibe?

RO: Well, they were all older teachers and they were all teachers that had been traditional in their practice and so on. I think Darwin Musselman, who was the drawing and painting teacher, he was probably one of the most well-known artists in Fresno at that time. Because the contributions that he had made from the churches to the civic groups and then to, they had this name, and a lot of people that followed, said, "Oh, yeah, Darwin Musselman was, he was the man." And yet there was a couple, Adolph and Ella Odorfer, he was the ceramics department teacher, he was the only one, and then Ella was teaching art history as well as life drawing and photography. And then there was another teacher teaching watercolor, a man teaching art history and so on. So it was a little bit of everything that you did, but at that time, it was so consuming that I wanted to spend as much time there in the art department as possible. So I even talked in the teacher that was in charge of the department, and says that, "Is there anything we can do?" They said, "Well, we'd like to hire you." I said, "Oh, that's wonderful. If you would take care of them, all the kind of things that our department needs to be able to teach these classes, everything from easels to paint to still life material and so on. So they had this one section in which it was organized in a way because it was just a mess of things that were put back. And so you felt very comfortable in that situation, having that relationship with these teachers, and yet feeling an important part of the art department at that time.

PW: And you were still a student?

RO: Yes.

PW: And I'm just kind of curious, describe to me, you're taking studio classes as well, like what are you drawn to? Like what are the mediums that you felt the most comfortable with, what was piquing your curiosity?

RO: And I think, again, with Darwin Musselman then, because they also taught graphic design classes, he was also then a graduate of the ArtCenter School in Los Angeles which was the school at that time. So then he would teach us about illustration as well as drawing and painting and so on. So that was something that I thought, well, gee, that seems like, yeah, I would like to be an illustrator or work in a graphic department, someone in advertising. So then at that time, I took as many classes and I did independent study classes and so on. And to be able to go and be on my own, to go ahead and develop my own curriculum and then be able to go ahead and work on that. So then at that time, then after graduating, then I had said, well, I think that maybe I'd like to go to the ArtCenter School. So then I left Fresno and went down there, and because I was between... excuse me, I'm getting everything mixed up now.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

PW: So you're still at Fresno State, though? I'm still curious about what's happening in the art world at that time, too?

RO: Very little.

PW: Very little.

RO: I� mean, other than because even though there was this thing that was happening throughout America and so on, at that time, of course, there were regional areas of art in the United States, the northeast, the southwest and so on. And it's not like today where you have the entire world at your hands via internet. And at that time then, your whole world of what art is was based on then where you were being taught at the university, it was after college at that time. That was my world, actually.

PW: And did Fresno have much of a gallery scene?

RO: No. In fact, that I remember as a senior student, there were a couple people that were pretty enthusiastic about making their original work and so on, and we realized there was no place for then college students to show their work. So what we did was this other young Black man, so we came down to Fresno, I mean, down to the inner city, we went to the (Californian Hotel). And we thought, where is there a place to show work and so on. We asked them, "Is it possible for us as graduate students at Fresno State to be able to show our work there? We would provide the easels, and we would set it up and man it and so on, and use your lobby basically as a show space?" They said, "Yeah, sure." And this was the hotel in Fresno at that time, the (Californian Hotel). So I remember then we took the initiative to do that, to go ahead and contact the manager and set up the shows and show our work at that time. That was one of the very few exhibitions of our work that took place. We didn't have a place to show at the college, they didn't have a gallery or anything at all.

PW: Did you live on campus?

RO: No, I lived off campus. There was a group of kids that were going to Fresno State, they were from Selma, and so we would then carpool up to Fresno.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

PW: So did you finish four years? Or no, I'm sorry, maybe two years at Fresno State? Or how long...

RO: Two years, and then I did some graduate work, but I did not extend to a graduate degree, but there some additional. Because I took a deferment at that point, I knew that then that because I was still under the Selective Service system, and I knew that the draft was still in. And because I had taken a deferment, and this was right after the Korean War, I thought, "Oh, my goodness, we're at the beginning." And so then I went to Selective Service, and so I said, "Can I anticipate then that I had these deferments from being inducted, my number might be called up?" They said, "Yeah, it probably would be pretty soon." I said, "Well, if I ask you to call my number up in the summer, that way I'd spend the two years and get out of the summer, because I didn't want to get mid-year because I knew I wanted to come back and go to school, so then that's what they did. Meanwhile, then I had tried to go ahead and take care of all that so that when I got out of school, got out of school, and then eventually was inducted in the army and spent my two years there. And came back to school and met Sandy. [Laughs]

PW: So what was the military involvement like?

RO: They're very different, they're very different. You did your basic training at Fort Ord, then you did eight weeks up at Fort Lewis, Washington, and eventually went through the Midwest to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and this is the first chance at visiting other parts of the country, and you realize that, oh my goodness, people are very different in different places. And so we did basic training or continued training, until I got my orders to be transferred to South Carolina. And oh my goodness, where is this? I didn't have a car or anything, so then I got my orders and went to the Greyhound Bus depot and bought a ticket and so on, so then took this bus all the way to South Carolina. And this was my first opportunity that you're on this bus, you're in uniform, and then it would stop at various places in the South. And I remember we were... someplace in Georgia, or maybe it was in Mississippi, I can't remember, the bus stopping to let off and pick up passengers so we can go off, and so then I need to go to the bathroom. My first encounter, a decision I had to make, "colored" or "white"? Where do I fit? Which one do I go to? And at that moment in time, I just thought, "Oh, my goodness." Because you didn't encounter this on the West Coast. And so I just walked into the "white" bathroom. Nobody said a thing, and maybe it's because I had a uniform on or whatever, I don't know. At that moment, you don't realize that then how naive one can be until you move into areas of the country or world where things are done very, very differently.

PW: Was there any of that kind of racial prejudice in the army?

RO: Yes. Well, then, as a result of moving, being stationed in South Carolina, we were in a small company, it was an artillery group, and what happened is that then there was a heavy water plant, which was for atomic bombs and so on, and it was 200-mile area, and we were the headquarter company there. They had then other companies that were, the sites were they had anti-aircraft guns and so on, and our job was to plot any incoming aircraft. And so we were in the small headquarters company, and so there were, another guy and I in this department took care of these kind of things about any information that went out, and any drawings and maps and so on that we were doing. So then, after a couple weeks of being there, then this other guy, he was actually from Alabama, he says, "Where'd you learn to speak such good English?" Again, what are these things when you don't realize that the people in the South, they have no idea about what Asians are like at that time, there were probably some Chinese and so on, but then it was one of those things that really surprises you. But then you hang out with a small group of people that became very close friends, and it was not uncommon for us to go and get together and have a beer. That was, again, one of those eye-openers about, someone asking me about how I learned to speak English.

PW: Were there other impressions and incidents?

RO: Other than that there were not many, even though you went off base. There was not then any kind of demonstration about "don't come here," and so on.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

PW: So you had two years that you were...

RO: In the army.

PW: In the army. And then I'm just kind of curious, what were your parents doing at that time? This was 1953?

RO: It was 1956... 1955 to '57. No.

PW: No, because had graduated...

RO: Because I graduated, yeah. Anyway...

PW: But your parents around, are they still...

RO: They still ran the restaurant, my younger brother was helping with the restaurant. My elder brother had nothing. He graduated and went to San Francisco, and he was working for a design firm up there. He and his company designed the interior of what was the... it's on the tip of my tongue, Jack Tar. Was that Jack Tar Hotel? It was a big one of Van Ness, big hotel.

PW: But your brother, you and your brother were both heading into this...

RO: Yes. Well, I didn't realize that he would want to do that, because we never... you know, as young boys, we never talk about what we want, do we share information, he ran with his group, I ran with my group, and it was just one of the things that...

PW: But as a professional, what was his style, or what kind of work was he doing?

RO: He was in interior design.

PW: Interesting.

RO: So anyway, as a result, my army years were pretty much normal, in fact because it was a very small base. And so what do you do after hours, what do you do on weekends? It's not as though you can just go ahead and walk into town or whatever, you had to drive out to be able to go ahead and engage in some kind of normal activity. So the people that had cars and so on, we would kind of drive out to Aiken, South Carolina, and go to a polo match, and something that was very, very different, so I'm trying to down to Daytona Beach in Florida in the summer months and so on. So those were very, very limiting, and until then the end of my tour and so on, and at that time, because after I got, after the first year, then I was given a, you can take a furlough for so many weeks that you can come back to home at that time then, and bought a little sports car, then we tooled back to the base. And that was then my choice of transportation, but there was not any dating or anything at all. There was people that you just kind of knew. But then again, as a result, on that amount of time, you find how you functioned within that, within that small headquarters group, and so then I got to know the person who was charged in the mess hall, he also the base swimming pool. And so somehow I asked him about that and I said, "Well, you need lifeguards," because I enjoyed swimming. So we had to take a lifeguard class, I guess it started under whatever system. He had to learn how to go ahead and do lifesaving techniques and so on, and I was hired as a lifeguard there. And so on weekends or days that I wasn't working, there was a base pool there, and you were just there. And you get to know people, and get to know the manager, the person who ran the commissary, they're very simple.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 18>

PW: You're an all-around athlete.

RO: Right. And also then, what had happened was, talk about that, it's very interesting. Because also then, because there were young men on the base with a small group. So we used to get together and play basketball, volleyball. So the major who was in charge of that headquarters company said, well, they have these competitions with armed forces, and navy and various places, in Norfolk, Virginia, and other places. So he says, "Let's get together a team," because he wanted to go ahead and be involved in that as well. So then he would play volleyball with us, so then eventually we were scheduled as a team, and we then drove up to this base to compete and so on. So that was, again, another thing they did that was out of the base and the regular army, five days a week doing the same things over and over again. So it was a chance to be able to ahead and experience other places. In fact, even after... I can't remember when it happened, I was chosen as the, they had this thing called the "soldier of the month," and the soldier of the month gets this furlough of a weekend free. At that time, I had my car, and so then I had been chosen by, I don't know who does this," and so I went to Charleston, South Carolina, and spent the weekend there. What do you do, you just walk around and go to a restaurant and this and that, but there's not much you can do. But then again, what happened was that the Selma newspaper, the Selma Enterprise, they sent that information to your hometown. So then it was this big deal when my mother says, "Here are your pictures, in uniform, and you were chosen as the soldier of the month." She was so proud. [Laughs] Very interesting how you just kind of pick up on these things. And then at the end of my tour, I had my little sports car, I says, "I want to go in and make it an adventure for me to drive all the way home." And I so I said, "I'm going to go ahead and try to visit as many people as I could." And it took me a month to get home, just from going, and this is when was in upstate New York and then eventually went to Minnesota to visit my uncle Kenji, who's the youngest child of my mother's family. And so a chance to be able to meet up with them, which I...

PW: Where was that?

RO: This was in Minnesota. And then from there, you'd go to places where you met other people that you had stayed doing your tour, just from going from place to place, you meet people, and you become kind of friendly with people. And so then you would stop by to see them. And so all through the Midwest, I remember... the kind of things that you do as a young man, I remember driving. If you're driving in the Midwest, then you have field after field after field of cotton and corn and so on, and I remember there as a point, I was driving and I was getting tired, and I pulled into the back of a gas station. And here I had this little convertible sports car, but I'd pull the top down and try make a little bed for myself and catch some sleep. And in the morning, then gas up and get in the car and drive off to the next place. It's really an adventure, because you can travel the entire the United States as freely as possible. I remember driving into New York City in my little sports car. But what do you do in New York City, you go and you find a hotel, and you don't know what the hotel is, it's probably a big deal hotel. But it's new to you, and you to take a tour of New York and find out what the rest of the world was like. It was an adventure, I think, that you realize as a young man that there's more to your world than Fresno, California. And so you're taking advantage of this, and you have the means to do so. It was wonderful.

PW: I love the story of your return. You didn't just get back on the bus and come home.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 19>

PW: But I'm also realizing in the mid-'50s is right when the McCarran, Walter-McCarran Act was passed which allowed Issei who were formerly from prevented from becoming U.S. citizens to become naturalized citizens of the United States. Did your father ever...

RO: Yeah, was that in...

PW: It was the '50s.

RO: '56, or I can't remember. Yes, because after my mother had then re-immigrated back to Japan, she lost her citizenship. And so then after they realized that this was something they had to do when the opened the restaurant, the second restaurant and so on, then to become a citizen of the United States. I remember they had to go and pass this exam to get their citizenship back. And one of the main reasons why I think they did that was because my father needed to buy a fishing license, and he couldn't do that, so he passed the test so that he could get a fishing license, because that's one of the things that he just absolutely loved to do, and he and his friends would go out and fish.

PW: I actually missed this. So your mother, when your mother married your father, there was an act at that time called the Cable Act that would remove the citizenship if you married, if a Japanese person...

RO: Married an alien, yes.

PW: Did that happen to your mother? Do you know if she lost her American citizenship?

RO: I think she did, I think that was a yes.

PW: But then you also said that she also when back to Japan for a period?

RO: Yes, and I think she was then... so I don't know exactly which caused her to lose her citizenship, I don't know.

PW: But she got it back when she did this test?

RO: Right.

PW: That's fascinating.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 20>

PW: All right, let's say we're back in the central valley after your...

RO: After service and so on, yeah.

PW: So where did you land?

RO: Well, I stayed at the, I came back to Selma and then helped at the restaurant and so on, then at that time, then I did start college. Went back to college at Fresno State.

PW: You said, "I'm going to back to graduate school?"

RO: Yeah. I say to go back, because it's a completely new campus. Because at that time, Fresno State College is where City College is now, and that's where I took all my art classes. So now all of a sudden I'm having to go in and catch a bus or drive then to the new campus, which was out in the boonies, which is where Fresno State is located now. So we were taking some classes there, and other classes at the original. So then at that time, even at that time, it was very new and so on. It was a new campus, new instructors, and everything was very, very different now, and your identity then becomes kind of skewed because before, you had this Japanese American guys and kids and so on, community that you hung around with. Now, all of a sudden, I knew I'd gone through then two years of the army and so on, now the community is open, it's very, very different. So then you are seeing other people that you can associate with.

PW: Did you graduate school by then?

RO: Well, this was basically, yes, I don't know what you would call it, I guess it was called graduate school, but it was after I had graduated and taking classes.

PW: Were you then in pursuit of a teaching credential?

RO: At that time I thought, because in the army, it so happened then the people I hung around with, several of them were teachers, they were basically from the East Coast, and so they had gotten degrees and were teaching. And they were talking about the idea of what job training he had to do and whatever, and now teaching. And I thought, well, you know, that might be a thing to do. So that's what I want to do, is pursue a teaching credential, so I took education classes and tried to get my degree, my credential.

PW: And were you creating art at this time?

RO: Well, yes, at that time. You were doing as much as you could, and most of the classes that I took in the art department were basically independent study, so that you worked out a curriculum. And I was still working with the same instructor, and he was very good about allowing me to do that.

PW: And was this Musselman? Like were you mostly leaning towards painting?

RO: Mostly then toward graphic design and painting and so on.

PW: And then did you have all of that happening on campus or did you have a space in your house?

RO: No.

PW: Your parents...

RO: I remember then I would use the dining room of my mother and father's house, and lay out all of the paints and this and that, then I would get to a point where I would then get tired and I would leave it. So then I would leave this mess on the dining table, I'm sure they woke up and said, "What's this?"

PW: And was this mostly oil or...

RO: No, it was basically... well most of the oil painting and things that I did basically at the campus, I rarely brought things home. I think it was probably more graphic design, things that were using water based acrylic, not acrylic, but we'd call it tempera at that time.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 21>

PW: And then so how long were you in that period of graduate school, finishing your teaching degree?

RO: Well, and then I had... let's see what happened now. I was there two years, and then I got my teaching credential, and then I got a job at Fresno High School. And this is when there was three high schools in Fresno. Fresno, Edison, and Roosevelt. So then I got this job, and I went, wow, terrific. 1962, '63, I guess it was. And at that time, of course, then Sandy and I were very close. And so we were just dating basically, and then I had thought there was probably more what we want to do because my roommate and I talked a lot about teaching and other places, or are we committed to Fresno High School and spend the rest of our teaching careers there? I loved teaching in Fresno High School, it was new friends and having students of that age group to be able to go ahead and impart what I knew about art. And yet, I was also trying to do some small painting in the apartment where I was living, but you don't get very involved, because teaching takes over so much of your time. So you do as much as you can when you can.

So then my roommate and I had decided we would then apply for teaching positions any place in the world. So we looked at all the jobs that the Department of Defense, they had naval bases, army bases, air force bases throughout the entire world. And so we said, well, let's go and apply for that. So at that point, then we applied, and I had, the previous summer, gone down to Mexico to vacation with another teacher friend. So we went down there looking around, and we went into a little place called Puerto Vallarta. And at this time there was one little hotel, and you had to take a bus to get into the little village. There was nothing else there, and it was just this beach, and then I found that there was a small American community, and there were basically a lot of young men that had permanently bought property there, and this is where we were living, kind of expatriate Americans, hippie types. And so then I thought, wow, this is a great place, there's nothing here but this beautiful sand and water. So when we came back, I had decided I was going to go back the following summer to buy property.

Meanwhile, then, this position, when we applied to teach overseas, came through, Sandy let me know, she says, "Hey, you got a telegram here," so then we found out that I was accepted to teach abroad. And so then at that time, Sandy and I, we talked, I will share this, I said, "This is a two-year commitment," I asked her if she would wait. And said, "I'm not going to do that." At that time -- this was very, very personal -- at that time, I asked her if she would marry me. So then okay, now, I left and ended up in Frankfurt, they said there were two positions open, one in Paris and one in Munich. The Paris position was only for one year, then they would close down the school, transferred everybody to other schools. So I took the Munich position because I was a very avid skier at that time, and I was here at the base of the Alps. So then I taught in the junior high school there, and then Sandy came over during the holidays. At that time, we contacted, I had heard that there were Americans that couldn't marry in certain times of the year or certain places, we found that in Basle, Switzerland, if they marry Americans. So then at that time we made arrangements for that, so then she and I went to Basle, Switzerland, and in this little old church that had been there, and then the pastor that had taken us to the chapel part of the church. And so here he was, spouting vows and so on, Sandy and I were sitting there in two tie-back chairs, and he was marrying us. So then after we married, and so then we then had made reservations to go to Zermatt, Switzerland, because a lot of the faculty that taught at Munich High School would always to go Zermatt because it was the place where they had a friends, and a great place to ski and people that they knew. So then we eventually honeymooned in Zermatt, Switzerland, after being married in Basle, Switzerland, of all places. [Laughs]

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 22>

PW: Well, to back up, you've got to tell us who is Sandy.

RO: Oh, Sandy was, yeah, it was very interesting, because we were living in the apartment when I was teaching back in Fresno. So then it was a lot of young people in that pool and a lot of young people were there. And so then we had a friend, a common friend, a friend who I knew from high school and also was a friend of Sandy, but I didn't know that. and so then she had said, well, I think what it was was my apartment, because the window there that faces the walkway, people would walk by there and look in the apartment, so then we didn't have curtains or anything. So then I took some tissue paper, and I glued it on to the window and so I said, "Well, I'll go ahead and create a design," part of the holidays, too. And so she had, apparently had conversations with this other friend that we both knew who also lived in the apartment, say that, oh, "Who's this guy that taught... what is this thing about?" So she said, "Oh, that's Bob Ogata." She said, "Oh, let me introduce you to them." So then she eventually, we were introduced, she was also living in another part of the apartments, so then we became friends and got to know each other better.

PW: And you were both students at Fresno State at the time?

RO: No, we were both teachers at the time. She was teaching at, was it Birney Elementary, I think? Yeah, I think so, and I was at Fresno High School.

PW: That connects up back to your story.

RO: Right, yeah.

PW: She went with you to Puerta Vallerta?

RO: No.

PW: No?

RO: She was still in Fresno, she didn't go with us. I just went with my other friend, but she was taking care of them, and the mail that came to the apartment.

PW: Then she joined you and then you got married in Switzerland. And did she stay with you the whole time that you were teaching in Munich? How did that work?

RO: Oh, yes, we were married in Switzerland. Then, of course, as a result, then we were allowed quarters for married couples. And basically, the first one we had was a garret apartment on top of these apartments, and there's that space at the top where the maid's quarters were. So that was our first little apartment until we were given regular quarters that were in the main part of the building. So yeah, our life began there, our firstborn.

PW: And you were teaching (middle/high) school?

RO: I was teaching... interestingly enough, when I got to Munich American High School, then I was introduced to the faculty. And the other art teacher that was in the high school was also Japanese American. His name was Ted Akimoto, he was from a family in Arizona, and so then he also was married to a Caucasian woman. So all of a sudden there's this connection that's made. So that was important because he was very instrumental in introducing us to what Munich life was like, especially for Americans. The symphony, the opera, the museums and the places to eat and on and on and on, so they were very crucial. I mean, the fact that, because our firstborn was in Munich, so then Sandy had to be, how do you do laundry and this and that and whatever, because those things were all kind of specialized in certain areas. So you befriend these people, and the Munich faculty is a faculty that was lot of young unmarried people that loved to party. We would make up reasons why we would party, and we were introduced to this and so on. And there was another group of the faculty that didn't so much, they had children and whatever. But then for people that were basically without children, these were the same people that went skiing together, so we went skiing in Austria, in Switzerland and Italy, everywhere. So with that connection that was made throughout the year with these people that became very, very good friends of mine for years.

And it was wonderful because it changed our lives about living in a foreign county and having to function. We lived off base, there was no base, these were just apartments that were leased out then to Americans. So then we had to go ahead and wanted to go shopping. We had to go downtown, of course, it was a place that we could buy things, American commissary, not a commissary, but that kind of thing. So we would spend most of our time in the, what do you call it, where all Germans were doing what they were doing. We wanted to be a part of that community, so we took German classes and we spoke German as much as we could, as often as we could and so on. And people were very, they were very forgiving in the fact that then we were trying to go ahead and speak. Of course, then a lot of the Germans thought that, seeing this Asian guy, they assumed that I was probably from Japan. That was the association they had. Very interesting that we would go to Octoberfest, was this huge beer event that was happening with all the breweries in Munich, and they would have a huge tent with an oompah band and picnic tables, and we would all get together and have beer, and you're just sitting around. One time we were there, and some German people that were sitting next to us. And the guy picked up my arm, and picked me up so we could stand on the seating part. He says, "Allies, Allies!" [Laughs] Then that was an awakening. Can you imagine that?

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 23>

PW: Were you creating art while you were in Munich?

RO: Yes. And I tried to do as much as I can, because it was one of these things where you just, the PX had some supplies, but not very much. So if you want supplies, you have to go down into the main part of Munich, the center part. And you go to this place where there was a good place called Schwabing in this kind of very hippie, liberal group of people. And there was a little art store. So I would have to go there, he didn't speak any English, and go and buy canvas and paint and whatever you do, and the best German that you do. But it was enough to be able to communicate. So once we got our little apartment, I took paper and we just lined the wall of our little dining area if you call it that, and that's where I was painting. And so at that point, then we became in contact with other Americans that were there that were not associated with the army, and very good friends, a young couple with a child, she was studying opera and he was basically a painter. But he was also a friend of this other art teacher, because they had gone to the same church. And so I was introduced to Woody and his wife, so he and I became good friends about art and things of that nature. And eventually I was invited into exhibitions in which he was involved with and made that connection with various places.

So you were painting as much as you could, and I think the one thing that made all the difference in the world was that because we would often go downtown to go to different museums, and most of the museums were very traditional where they held collections of work from centuries back. But then the one major museum, art museum in downtown Munich was called the Haus der Kunst, which is the building that was designed by him, and it had all these large exhibitions of German art. So we went down there and we were looking around, and all of a sudden we came to this one section of the museum, and there was a sign in front that says, "Art U.S.A. Now." I thought, "What's that?" So we walked into that place, and I was just stunned. I was absolutely blown away by what I was seeing. And what it was was a collection that the Johnson and Johnson company had amassed a collection of one hundred American artists from different venues and different places of the country. And even though there were people that were from Italy or Germany studying in the United States, were included. So all of a sudden I was seeing, "Is this what's happening in America?" Unbelievable. Because prior to that, your association, your understanding about what was happening in art in the United States, you didn't have the internet, you didn't have things of that nature, you had a magazine called Art in America, and that was basically it. And so he had no idea. And all of a sudden this realization that, wow, this is what people are doing today, and these were all people who were very instrumental, and then the art movement that was happening at that period of time, and they were giants of the business.

PW: Which was what? What was...

RO: So then you had [inaudible] so you saw abstract paintings, you saw traditional paintings, you saw social realism, you saw this and that, and it was just a bit of everything. And you can go from place to place to place and see all this work, which I was not introduced to prior to this because of my limited isolation in Fresno, you don't have that. And so this was then the beginning, I said, "Oh, my goodness." So as a result of that then, it changed everything. And so here I was trying to go ahead and make paintings and so on, in this very loose style and so on. And then after we had spent our four years there and so on, we knew we were going to be coming back, because our first child, Amy, was born. And we could have stayed, we could have loved the idea of staying, living in Europe, but then we realized that when you have a child and so on, you want to share that information and that experience with your, so they understand they have grandfathers and grandmothers. So we made that decision to come back, so as a result, we had come back and I was looking for a job when we came back, and it was a position opened in Oakdale High School, which is near Merced. And it's this little rural place, but it was the only job that I could find, so it must have been, I accept that job and taught there for a year. And then my other friend who also lived in, he was also one that I knew in college, but he had gone abroad to travel, but he got a job in Stuttgard, and so then he and I, we connected with each other, we went to each other's homes and so on. But then when he came back, then he was teaching at Sierra High School, which is up in the foothills. Well, then I had been teaching at this other school near Merced. And so he called me. He knew that I was back, he called me, "Say, there's a job opening up at Sierra High School." And he said, "You should apply for it." And he thought that possibly we would make a perfect fit because we knew each other in Europe as well, and even in the college years at Fresno State. So I applied and got the job.

PW: What year was that?

RO: That was in 1966, '67, I think. So then here I was, so we mentioned a little house in the Mayfair District, and here was this place. It was a nice house, and it had a garage. And so I thought, well, I want to continue now, especially with the enthusiasm and inspiration that I received from this Art U.S.A. Now show. It changed everything. Plus the fact that now I was teaching back in an American school and all these facilities. So then I started to say, "I want to do a body of work," and I wasn't quite sure. Also at that time, then I was introduced into this new material called acrylic. I had been taught as a transparent watercolorist or an oil painter, that was my tradition. And now all of a sudden I'm finding that, oh, acrylic. And I said, "Well, how do you do this?" So I kept playing around in this little dark, damp garage, and then eventually mounting a show. And this is now the show that you saw next door. It was my very first solo exhibition of my work, and all of my career. And it's very interesting, because at that time, it changed everything about the way I thought about my expansive view of what art in America was like. But I could be a bit player in all of this, especially in Fresno.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 24>

PW: Well, explain it for everybody. So in 1967, '68 was when you did this?

RO: Yeah, around that period.

PW: This was your first major solo show?

RO: Yeah.

PW: And where was it held?

RO: This was held in a little place called the Fig Tree Gallery, and at that time then, there were somehow a small group of people, like-minded people, they were housewives, there were Fresno State art instructors, there were other high school teachers. And there was no place to show, and somehow we kind of connected. And so we got together in the early stages and said, "Hey, let's start a gallery." At that time, cooperative galleries in San Francisco and other places were booming, because I think everybody was searching for the very same thing. So eventually we rented a little house that was just right off of Divisadero and Van Ness, in this little house we rented, and said, "Now, what do we do? Who do we call?" and so on. And so it happened that one of the members was then, her husband was teaching at the college, and they had a fig orchard that they owned. So they came up and they said, "Let's call it the Fig Tree Gallery of all things, and that would become the name based on her suggestion. And this small group of about six people, we had so much fun, because we were very instrumental in experimentation and having parties just for parties' sake. And trying to get the city of Fresno to understand that we exist, and that this is what's happening, because it wasn't happening at the college. Eventually it was, later on and so on, so as a result, it was a very, very interesting business.

PW: Well, tell me, since we got to see the paintings today, tell me a little bit about, they're so clean, they're so vibrant, they're so playful, their color is such a presence, such about surface, but there's also... talk to me about that.

RO: This is, I think, what happens with the adoption of acrylic paint, because if you're working with oil paints, you see the limitations that you have with that, which is the fact because oil paint is an oil-based paint, and it's very slow-drying. And so then if you're trying to paint a very large area, which I wanted to do, other than smaller canvases. And you had to go ahead and apply that whether you apply it with a wide brush or you thin the paint down and you do it over and over and over again, and you had this paint called acrylic, with one stroke, because it levels itself out as you're brushing, so it doesn't show any brush strokes at all. And so you can mix, and the colors were very, very vibrant and came in large quantities. So it was a perfect medium to find yourselves in, this is what I want to do. So I thought, well, as imagery, how do I deal with all this? That the idea then, because you're thinking about where you lived before, but now you're thinking about new work, the influence of the Art U.S.A. Now show and so on. So when you take a piece of paper and you're making marks, eventually all the marks eventually have... if you look at them and you synthesize something specific about a particular mark you make with a brush, and you just clean it up to a point where it becomes a particular shape that you can define for yourself. I said, "Well, that's kind of an interesting shape. I don't know what that shape is or where it comes from, but it's like doodling." So I started to use that and using brush strokes, and I think at the same time, I was probably a little bit aware of calligraphy especially, and traditional Japanese calligraphy and so on, the kind of brush strokes, the things that they did, and yet I did not understand that or know what they were doing. But then it's kind of in the back of your mind about your own heritage and about where you are.

So then I started doing these little markings, and I would just simplify the marks the way they are. And that became then the illusionary effects of what I want to do to change shapes and so. Then at the same time, because I'm working with large panels of color, I wanted the work then to show some dimension this way instead of all being flat. Because at that time, anytime that you show something, when you're working on a flat surface, you're using applied texture with the paint that gave you some limited dimension, but I was using this flat paint that had no dimension. So I said I'm going to go and make it artificially. That's when I started stretching the canvas and so on, one-by-four pieces of wood, and stretching it so it's thicker. And one-by-two, so I had all these dimensions in which I could go ahead and prepare the canvas. Then I realized that you take this, and you put them together, then you can alter the dimension however you want to. If you want the one-by-four to be here or here, there's a one-by-two here, so on, and also depends on where the color stops and the next color begins. And the shape that you put in and how that shape follows you around. So it became very, it became an obvious direction at that time. This is what I want to do, this is what's exciting for me.

PW: A little like an alphabet. Was this a huge departure in terms of, were you painting figurative stuff before, were you doing...

RO: Oh, yeah. You're doing the kind of things that were influenced by your teacher in college. So you were doing a still life and trying to do it as conventionally as possible, about light and shade and showing the dimension of the form, flower, vase or whatever, so on. And then you started to go ahead and move beyond that, and I think that you still, you're using subject matter, whether it be the landscape or whatever, as information. So then this show that changed everything about that, do you need that? Can you take them and make paintings based on shapes? And this was also a period in which there was a lot of non-objective work that was being done in the United States, the idea that people were moving away from objectified forms and objectified imagery. And this is how abstraction was moving along from where it was before, and the influence of traditional forms of art making at that time, whether it'd be from Europe or from early American 1940s and so on. So then all of a sudden there was this tremendous change in the way people were, a lot of experimentation going on, and I felt that, wow, this is where it's happening. Trying to fit yourself in someplace where that might fit for you, and this was one of those things where, again, it was the idea, we moved back to Fresno, acrylic paint, and just one of these things that changes the way I thought about work.

PW: How was the show received?

RO: Well, I think that the Fig Tree Gallery had been in existence for a few years while we were gone. And they had developed a clientele, and they were people like architects and other people that were in the design industry. But still, Fresno was very limited at that time, they basically had, the Fresno Art Center became, moved over and became the Fresno Art Center which is now the museum, because it's transformed itself into that. And so there was very little activity, there were not any galleries or commercial galleries or cooperative galleries in town whatsoever. So basically we were the only ones. So as a result, we were kind of the forerunners about commercial or cooperative galleries in Fresno. So then all these years, we can kind of look at ourselves and say we probably are the longest cooperative gallery in the state of California that has been in operation for all these years.

PW: Longest running.

RO: Because it's been up and down, there were times in which we had five members, and next time there were fifteen members, and next time it was twelve members, and we were reliant on membership to pay for the rent, for the space we were occupying, and then the electricity and all of that, so we need income coming in, and some people were now starting to look at us and say, "Well, there's some interesting work done at this place called the Fig Tree Gallery. And architect had purchased one of the paintings in the show that was part of this show that you saw next door. And that was very encouraging for me to have someone that, an architect who was art related-minded to be able to buy a piece. But sales were few and hard to come by. People in Fresno don't do that. [Laughs]

PW: So this was a big moment for you because of the development of the stuff?

RO: Yeah, right.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 25>

PW: You're teaching at Sierra High School. Did you have... and I think I read in the newspaper article that you had a second child by then?

RO: Yeah.

PW: And painting out of the garage, right?

RO: Right.

PW: Okay. I'm going to change gears, but I want you to tell the story of how you get to this gear. But growing up, I knew you as a ceramicist. I saw you at the Fresno Bazaar...

RO: Okay, that comes next, that comes right next.

PW: You were always selling pots. So what happened? I thought you were ceramics and then you went to painting.

[Interruption]

RO: So anyway, then I got this teaching job at this high school in the foothills, and the previous instructor had really expanded what art was. He was the only instructor there, but he had an area where he had a kick wheel, potter's wheels and a little kiln. He had easels and various things. And then as I was hired, I said, well, then I was given a job also to be able to teach ceramics. The last ceramics class I had was in college, from Adolf Odorfer in 1950 or early '50s. So I would spend hours after class learning how to do this and finding things about clay and so on, and eventually what happened, I found myself getting better at this. And I then was not doing much painting at that time, and my head was now moving toward clay because for me, it was a very, very exciting to do this. And so over that period of time, we had, I made connections with the university, and we got to a point where the department was growing to such a rate that we even built a new building that was basically in our building. Because we were basically in a World War II barracks, and so we had this wonderful facility, which was designed by the other art teacher and I, and so we would design this thing. So that expanded the way we thought about art. So over, then after we got the building, we said, gee, because there's so much interest in ceramics that's happening in other Fresno schools. And I had also been interested enough to go to conferences where people were then giving, you were introduced to what people were doing in art in the United States at the high school level. And I found what people were doing. There was one place in, I guess it was in Colorado, I don't remember where he was from, or maybe it was in Southern California. He was saying, well, we have this program that we'd call, and we'd call this thing Clay Day, where we'd invite all these schools to come and have this activity and competitions. What a great idea.

So I came back to Fresno, and I'm talking to the other art teachers saying, "Why don't we have this thing called Clay Day? We can have it here, and here on a weekend, one Saturday afternoon, we can invite all the schools in Fresno, whether they be in the county or city schools and so on, and bring a handful of kids up. And we would have this thing where they would have a lecture usually by a well-known clay person. We had Stan Bitters come up and talk to the kids, then we had lunch, and then we had these competitions, who could throw the tallest pot, who could throw the widest pot or hand build this or that, and we would give out art books as prizes for these kids. And we would provide lunch for them, and so we had thing and everybody loved doing it, and people would say, "Yeah, that's terrific. So we eventually contacted the art department at Fresno State. I said, "We've been doing this thing at Clay Day," and they had heard about it. Because then some of the kids that graduated from Sierra High School in clay, were now taking classes at the college. And they were doing very well, and in fact, the ceramics instructor says, "Wow, your students are really doing wonderful things." So they were open to the idea of then having Clay Day. And so they said, "Yeah, we can do this," and we can sit out there on the patio and each team brings their own wheels and we'll provide them benches and so on and we'll provide the clay and whatever, and then the judges. So we would have the busloads of kids come, from Hanford and every place, Kingsburg and Reedley and so on, then we'd come and we'd have hundreds of kids out there, and these kids having fun, just with clay, messing with clay, and hand building and messing, and it was just a wonderful opportunity to have developed, to emphasize the importance of clay as a process, and then learning about what happens when you work with the process of class.

PW: What year was this, about?

RO: This happened from... so must have been '68, '69, ran for I don't know how many years, ran for about five or six years. That first year we had it at the high school, Sierra High School, and then the following year, I think we had it at...

PW: Fresno State.

RO: Yeah. But it was just well received, well received by people.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 26>

PW: What about you personally?

RO: So then, yeah, because I was involved with clay and so on, and because, enough that I wanted to sponsor Clay Day, I had some students then that were very, very, had gotten to the point where they were very efficient. And I had this one student who had then graduated, and I had hired him to come back and take care of the ceramics department, and he would clean up after and so on, he would also act as an assistant. So then he and I, then, started going to workshops all through the state of California. And we'd run into workshops that were done by the major entrepreneurs in clay in California today.

PW: So, for example, where?

RO: Oh, we would go to San Francisco, we would go to Big Creek. Big Creek was a pottery, and what they did was it was a pottery that you could apply to, and you could go there and you'd have this residency there. And you had a place to stay, and you pay for food, and then you have a place where you work, this large area. And so you got to this large communal area of people that were involved in clay. And so it was done by applications, and they pick and choose people. And so then they had instructors or guest potters who would come there to be able to go and teach the class, or to go and talk about their own work. And we had, for instance, Michael Cardew. Michael Cardew is from England, and he was one of the principal potters of that period. If you think about Bernard Shaw, who else was doing... oh, the influenced of Shoji Hamada to then, especially in England and so on, and so he was one of the people that was working there, too, he had a pottery, and he was then the guest who came to the United States and then gave this workshop. And he also spent time in Africa running a workshop and then developing an idea of using clay for making pots and so on, teaching the people there. So then it was wonderful to have these very, very important people that were instrumental in moving clay forward in the world.

PW: What did you love so much about the clay? It seems like a big change, but maybe not.

RO: No. Once you get... with painting, it's very different. And once you work with clay, it's a real transition, and because it's something that you do, your mindset is very different. Your mindset is very different in the fact that then how you take something that is three-dimensional, whereas with painting, you're working basically two-dimensionally. And so you have this three-dimensional material that you can squeeze and mold and whatever, then I think that every child making mud pies has had that kind of natural instinct to this three dimensional material. So now all of a sudden you're doing this thing, and you're starting to understand what other people were doing, and they were fantastic things in clay. So then you wanted to be a part of that because it was really hot, really hot. And the universities and clay departments in San Jose and Fullerton and so on were just really producing a lot of wonderful potters. As compared to today, it's gone down, but it's coming back again, too.

PW: You just mentioned Hamada as one of the ceramicists or potters that were having influence, and it's the first time that you've mentioned a Japanese, this is a Japanese national, right?

RO: Right.

PW: Japanese national artist that was impacted in this world that you're very, it's constant now. What did that mean to you to have this Japanese potter coming in?

RO: Yes, it was the beginning of a lot of things. So I would continue to do these workshops, and so then I would go down to Idlewild, which is east of Los Angeles, and there's this art complex. And they would invite people in different areas of expertise. One summer they invited the people from the, Navajo people and so on, to give workshops in these small, traditional, what's the name... the woman who did these beautiful, smoked pieces, Native American pieces with these graphic designs. And so they would give workshops, and then they had a workshop with a man who was, an American young man who lived in New Jersey, but he had studied in Japan for about ten years, and he knew a lot of people, and they invited him to come out, and then to help them with the traditional anagama. The traditional anagama is a kind of kiln that the potters from Japan, ever since the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they would basically take a hillside, and they would burrow a hill at the lower part, and they would dig it in, dig a hole in all the way as deep as they can, and then there would be a hole at the top of this mound. They would crawl in there with these pots, and they would build a fire at the front, the mouth of this hole, and of course, the angle and so on would cause the flames and the ashes that flow through and exit out. So then you have places like Bizen, Shigaraki, places like this in Japan that are, still today, well-known for their traditional kilns of that period, modified over a period of time. So then he helped design, and we helped build the kiln at Idlewild. And so this was the first time we fired a wood burning kiln, because they were a rare existence in the United States. There were some on the East Coast, some, I think, in the upper West Coast, but there were very, very few wood burning kilns.

So here was this experience you have of making where you don't put any glaze on it, you crawl in there and then the person who loads the kiln, then knows about what happens with the clay as a result of this period of firing. You're firing the thing for four days straight, and you don't let up at all, you work in ten hours shifts, you're having to go ahead and split wood, or you're the person who is then watching this stack, the chimney to see how much smoke is coming out, and then when you should stoke the chamber. You're watching the glow of the inside of the chamber because it changes. They start to go from red and dull red and orange and eventually yellow, and you're looking for this, but then you have these pyrometric cones that are in there that tell you what the temperature where they start to bend. So you're looking along the side of this chamber to a spot where these things were located to determine if the temperature is even throughout the chamber itself. And after firing and so on, and then when it reaches that, then it cools down, you just mud up the openings, so there's no air that gets in there, then it cools for another three, four days. They eventually crack it open and the person crawls in there and pulls out these pieces. And the premise in wood-burning kilns is the fact that when wood burns -- and it depends on the kind of wood that you have -- what happens is that the direction of the air starts to deposit ash on the pots that are sitting there. So it hits this and the ash starts to collect, and as you're reaching higher and higher temperatures, the ash turns to a glaze. It liquefies and it starts to run down.

And this is treasured in Japan. This is an ideal thing that you want, and so any person who worked in wood burning kilns knows that the traditional Japanese, whether it be in Shigaraki or Bizen, or the major places, know that the characteristics of pots that have this accidental quality or the effect of fire and so on, prizes them, what happens into the work that's collected. So in Shigaraki, that used to be part of the tea tray, so all their pots would be, containers for people who then bought tea, and they were known for that. And they would use a different kind of clay. As a result then, one of the people that came and taught class was a man by the name of Shiro Otani. Shiro Otani, of the prefecture of Shigaraki, There's a designation given to creative people in Japan through the country as well as in different parts, and he was given this as the... I can't remember the designation called, it's like the Nobel prize for a potter, particular areas as well as in Japan, so it might be for a woodworker, it might be for someone who does weavings, it might be someone who does calligraphy and so on, but then he came...

PW: National treasure.

RO: National treasure, that's what it's called. So as a result then, we befriended each other, and in fact, I had a VW bus at the time. This was my major transportation. So then a whole bunch of kids from Idlewild said hey, and Shiro was, said he'd liked to go to Mexico. So we all jumped in a bus, we drove down to Tijuana, and we went and visited the museum there in Tijuana and did a little bit of touring. Jumped back in there and came back, and so we became very, very good friends. And so then we were going to Japan because of my, we're doing some research with my daughter, and then Shiro found out that we were going to be in Japan, I think, through the people that we were with. And so then we got this telegram or something saying that Otani was going to go ahead, and he was in Shigaraki, but then he was a ways away. So we then found the way, you take these small trains to go there and be able to stay with him. So we stayed with him for a day.

PW: And this was the '70s maybe?

RO: Yeah it was in the '90s, yeah.

PW: So the ceramics lasted...

RO: Lasted about, yeah, more than a decade, almost eleven or twelve years, very, very important.

PW: Then that trip, when you did go in the '90s, was it the first time you went to Japan?

RO: It was for me. Sandy had been there before. She'd been there on a Fulbright. So yeah, she's been to Japan more than I have. [Laughs]

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 27>

PW: Going back really quickly to the ceramics, I wanted to ask you this this one question. So I have a very distinct memory of you selling the ceramics and such at the Fresno Bazaar.

RO: Absolutely.

PW: So tell me about the Fresno Bazaar, because not very many people remember it.

RO: No, because what was was that... and we had, our dentist used to go and work there and handle the cooking. There was a collection of people who did the cooking. But they also, they had a section for handmade items made by other Japanese Americans. So then I don't know if I asked, or how I became connected, but then I asked if I can show my wares, and they said, "Yeah, absolutely." And also, Matsumoto was going to sell books there, too. So then we were in a side by side. So I became closer to him knowing that we can spend that time together. So yeah, I started selling wares there. And I think it was the chance, then, to... because there were very few Japanese American potters around, there was a fellow in Sanger, I guess it was in Sanger, who was making pots as an individual potter. I don't think he had any outlet for what he was doing. So anyway, this was a chance for all these people to come in and see work they had not seen before. And the work had transitioned into very traditional Japanese ware that you would use every day, and I wanted to do that, but done by a Fresno potter. And then at the same time, I wanted to show work that was done in these workshops with a wood burning kiln. So there were people that were saying, "Oh, yeah." A lot of younger Japanese Americans did not understand the transformation of what happens to that. But then they wanted to collected and have pieces that I had made. So, yeah, I did that as often as I could and as long as I was a potter.

PW: Where was it held?

RO: It was held at the church in the back of the, what's the building that's called a community center or something? That's what it was used for.

PW: And it went for several decades, right?

RO: Yeah.

PW: Started in the '70s, but you're talking about Mas Matsumoto selling books, but that must have been in the '80s?

RO: Yeah, right.

PW: So it was something organized by the church and it was a fundraiser?

RO: Right, right. Fundraiser, and also then...

PW: Eventually...

RO: Yeah, and then eventually, of course, this happened at the new church, it's very different there today.

PW: Was there ever any crossover between your work and ikebana in Fresno?

RO: Only because Sandy became very, very involved in that part of the culture, and she was then taking classes and got to know people, the Ikebana Society, meeting these other Japanese Americans that were doing these kinds of work. So she became very, very involved, because even she was working in a florist when she was going to Berkeley, so she's had this little connection between arrangements and flowers and organic things and so on. So she started to do that and then became very, very involved in that. And then the connection that was happening with the Hanford museum.

PW: The art museum? Yeah, I remember. Which is now closed. It was the collector who collected Japanese artwork.

RO: Collected, absolutely.

PW: That was an extraordinary collection.

RO: It was wonderful.

PW: In the middle of the walnut groves, right?

RO: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 28>

PW: Well, okay, so you're saying eleven, twelve years of very intensive ceramic work, then what happened?

RO: Then I found out that you spend, if you're making a tea pot, you make the body, you make the lid, you make the spout, you make the handle, and you put all these things together, and how much can you make? Fifty dollars, maybe, twenty-five dollars? And I realized that, gee, I work in the garage, in my house, and so on, and I produce all this work, and all of a sudden you realize it's not worth your time. I still love making pots, but there was always this desire, seeing what was happening with art in America, continuing on and moving, and also because I was still teaching at the high school, and trying to introduce your students to what was happening. So then, at that point, I said, "I want to have a studio aside from my garage." So I eventually found a studio that was on H Street, it was an upstairs lot. Originally it was a weigh station, because there was a weight meter outside, and people would, I guess, bring their wares, goods and so on, and it would be weighed because it's right next to the tracks there. But then I found that there was a space upstairs that was open, but this guy I knew who taught at the university was a painting instructor. And he had a studio out there, and I did not know that until I found out, then, "Oh, yeah, that might be a possible place." So eventually I acquired a portion of the upstairs loft, and so that's where painting became very crucial for me. Then I thought, "Well, how do I move, make this transition from ceramics into clay?" How do you become a painter? You work in isolation, there's nothing to do, so I thought, well, how do I do this? I remember going to San Francisco with an armload of slides. Thirty-five millimeter slides, and maybe a small painting, and trying to hit as man galleries as I could that would be generally sympathetic to what my work looked like.

PW: Ceramics, correct?

RO: No, this was slides of small paintings.

PW: Paintings, okay.

RO: So then that's one of these things where he says, "Don't call us, we'll call you," kind of thing. Then I said, "Okay, what else can I do?" And I realized at the state of California, that there were these competitions that were afforded prizes. And so this was the trend then, so I started applying. I knew you would send in a slide and twenty-five dollars for this competition that's happening here or there or wherever, mostly in northern California. And I often speak to former people and so on, I said, well, I wish I had saved all of the rejection slips I had gotten from competitions and so on. But you just kind of keep at it, and all of a sudden this one says, "Gee, you've been accepted into this competition." And what, there might be twenty-five artists that were selected, maybe two hundred applied for that. So that kind of sets you up a little bit, saying, "Wow, maybe what I'm doing is kind of worthwhile, maybe people are creating interest." And at that point, the work was getting out, I was introduced to more and more places. Eventually I had, my daughter was going to Bates College in May and so on, and then they had convinced me that I should then have a show there, apparently the people that were running the school in that section of the department and so on, so then I sent a whole bunch of paintings there to be shown at a show at the college. And then after a month or so on, they came back, they were stuck in my garage.

Meanwhile, I had entered this competition called The Art of California, and anybody could apply for this. And what had happened was that they had jurors from different parts of the state. And so then the first time I applied, I was accepted to that, and they published a book with all the people that applied. Then I applied again, then I won one of the first prizes, and so they focus on your work when you do that. Then what happens, these are sent out to all the galleries in California. So this guy from Palo Alto area called me and said, "Hey, I saw your work in this magazine, I'd like to come see your work." I said, "Yeah, sure." Well, he made a lot of money in real estate in Palo Alto in that whole area south of San Francisco, and so he says, "Well, I'm a collector and I have collected a lot of contemporary work, and I want to start a gallery in San Francisco." Meanwhile, I had been trying to convince other galleries to handle my work, and this was going on at that time and so on. So anyway, he came down and I pulled out all these paintings, and he said, "I'm interested in mid-career painters. I don't want new MFAs because I don't know their... I want artists to show that have a body of work that reflects the continuation and their interest in painting." So he says, "That's what I'm looking for. I saw your work and I thought, oh, I'd like you to be a part of this stable." So that completely changed everything. When someone now handles the work, they get their fifty percent, but they certainly earn it. Now they're inviting people to come, collectors, and you realized that, oh. Because I think for most artists who are independent artists, how do you manage today? You have Instagram and the internet, but otherwise, you're almost dependent on galleries. That doesn't happen much. The brick and mortar spaces are all kind of going on the wayside because the internet allows that to happen. I mean, even in San Francisco, with the galleries there, even 49 Geary is almost deserted, there's a couple galleries there. But now it's moved over to Minnesota Avenue, Minnesota Street, where they've developed these warehouses and a lot of activity over there.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 29>

PW: And your painting, within the painting, again, too, you moved mediums. Did you go back to oil?

RO: Yeah. So I went back, then I was using acrylic, and eventually realized that there was things that you could do in what I wanted to do, could only be done with oil. There's that quality about you, what you do with oil, how you treat it, how you overglaze it, all these things. At that point, large canvases with large brush strokes and very active, active services. So as a result, I went back to oil and continued on with that for a lot of years until I changed again. [Laughs] As you might hear about that or now.

PW: I do want to hear it. Because I was going to ask you about development of the medium, development of the imagery, development of the movement.

RO: Yeah. And I think because of the, I think because of the exposure in the Bay Area, and even though I had other places that showed my work, I had a gallery in Tucson and Phoenix, I had a gallery up in Napa and another gallery in Los Angeles, West L.A. and so on. So you had all these all these galleries and active, and gee, it was more than I had expected to be associated with. But all galleries, they're not galleries that exists for ever and ever. For whatever reason they all start to fall apart, whether they be financing, whether it'd be interest, change in ownership or whatever. So eventually that kind of moved things along until this gallery in the Bay Area. I was involved in a couple shows, and I was still teaching at the high school. And since they had, I was a part of the stable, I wanted to show that, I wanted to be an active member of that stable, that gallery. I remember going and asking the principal if I could, I wanted to take the Friday off. And on (Thursday) after school I would jump in my car and drive to San Francisco because the reception was on Thursday night. So I could meet the other artists who were showing there, and meet some of the people who were collectors. And then I would do this a couple years in a row, so that was the association. And as a result, they said, "Well, we want to go ahead and have a show of your work," and so they scheduled a show. I did this body of work and took it up there, and they said, "Well, gee, this is San Francisco, the prices are very different." And they said, "Well, let's leave it," because they were basically Fresno. Almost sold the show out, almost show the show out. And normally what happens when the person has a solo show, then we schedule maybe two or three years down the road, because they want the other stable members, and they said, "You know, there were so many people that didn't get a chance to buy your work, let's schedule a show next year." They never do that. So I was busily working. So over the period of time, from there, there was such interest in work, they opened a space at the Stanford shopping center, kind of a high end shopping center, and they opened up a satellite gallery there. They opened up a gallery where the, right where the transit, where the people come in from Oakland, I'm not quite sure, but there's that transit station where people working in San Francisco that are coming in from other areas, and they've rented a little space there where all these people were unloading and loading, and there was that space as well. I probably sold more than a hundred paintings in the Bay Area during that time I was with them.

PW: And what era...

RO: This is late '90s, maybe '96, '97. And then from there until then the gallery went out, and I was with another gallery, and then eventually picked up by then, by the Artist Gallery at Fort Mason, which is an auxiliary of MoMA, and I was with them for a lot of years. Sometimes when I think about that, I've had people now that called me to say, "I bought a painting of yours. Are you still working?" I said, "Yeah, drive down here." I was having a show at the Artist Gallery at Fort Mason, says, "Remember this?" Shows me a photograph of a painting she had purchased. So you were getting this from all different places, and I thought, "Oh my goodness." [Laughs] I mean, one of the things, like being in the right place at the right time, it probably would never happen again. I mean, I don't see that happening at all. I have a hard time, this is the worst place in the world for selling paintings. But every so often now, people are driving down from the Bay Area saying, "I bought this new apartment," wherever and so on, "and we're looking for work," and trying to also educate people here in the valley. There's a lot of wealthy farmers here in town, and just recently, because I work with a decorator in town, and I usually have Piet and Tim handle those things, because she works with them, and so then it's this person who lives in a very wealthy part of town here, I don't know what they farm and so on, but then again, the decorator introduced them to me, and then my work, and then they, with the help of the decorator, chose a piece of work, they installed it there, it's a very large diptych painting. And they had it up there for about a week and so on, and the people were going to go on vacation. So Piet and Tim went over there and took it down and brought it home. They came back and said, "Where's the painting? We want the painting back." They came back and called Piet and Tim and said, "We want to buy the painting." I was surprised, the fact that traditional, non-art people now are buying work, and mostly a lot of work that's being done during certain periods of my development. So that was a surprise for me. And today, every so often, I get a call from some who says, "I'm at this point in my life, I want a change, and make it a little more contemporary. What have you got? I have this much space," and da-da-da. So it happens, very interesting.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 30>

PW: So I was going to ask, one of the more recent use of materials has been the charcoal?

RO: Oh, yes, that's another thing, that was a change.

PW: Talk about that.

RO: So about, probably more than ten years ago, probably twelve or fifteen, I said, okay, everybody is using the same materials to paint, they're using acrylic or oil, I said, "I want to change up what I do. I want to separate myself from what everybody else was doing." I said, "How do you do that?" You change it in terms of format, you change in terms of imagery, you change in terms of process. And I thought, well, what can I do? I said, okay, I'm going to do something that's very unusual. I'm going to take a drawing tool and use that as my medium for making paintings. Drawing tools are used for paper or whatever flat surface. And so what I did was I said, in the tradition of my culture, especially the Japanese side of it, you have an ink block, you drop water with it, you thin it, and that's how you do your calligraphy, and that's how you do these scroll paintings. I said, "That makes sense, so what do I do?" So I said, "Well, how can I do this?" So I was experimenting with things, how can I take chalk, and I would grind chalk down into powder, charcoal or whatever, and then use it in a way. Well, it doesn't have any body at all, you put down, it flakes and moves away. And so I thought, well, I'll use water. And water and chalk do not mix because there's an ingredient in chalk and charcoal that doesn't allow that. So then I used paint thinner, oh, all of a sudden the chalk is now dissolving. And so I can use it in a way where then it could be used, if I were to use a lot of paint thinner and bunch of powdered charcoal, mix it up, I could wash it out, just like doing paint. So I said, "I'm going to do that." So I adopted that, I did a whole body of work, and it was basically black and white pieces on canvas, and this would go up to San Francisco, that gallery.

So then I took the body of work, all black and white pieces about this size, they sold out the show. Because I thought people would want color, people associate the emotional quality of color in paintings. But for some reason, black and white pieces were, all of a sudden, I could not believe it, the people that were then, they say, "Well, we have all these people, they would rent paintings." When Newsom was running for governor, then there was a person who lives in Pacific Heights. They had rented a painting from the Fort Mason Center, they had enough for a reception they had for Newsom when he was running for governor. Eventually they took the painting back, and they missed it and they eventually bought the painting. Then what happened was the last time, was that I was taking a bunch of paintings, because I was going to have a show. You know where the cafeteria part of the SF MoMA is? You walk in, it's the ground floor, tables around, and there's walls, and I talked to them, I said, "Is it possible for me to go ahead and show my work there?" Because the artist gallery was running that part of it. And they said, "Ah, sure, absolutely." So they scheduled me, so I did this body of work, especially of big pieces, more horizontal because the spaces call for that. So then I took the work up there, and they called me and said, "Oh, by the way, we'd like you to do a couple more of these longer pieces. We just sold this piece that was supposed to go up there." I said, "Oh, okay." So then I find out later on, that when Obama had come to the peninsula, and they were having this million dollar lunch where all the CEOs of Facebook, all the ones that came from this very, very important collector and what do you call these people who use their money to do things and buy things? Anyway, he was having a luncheon for Obama, and he invited all these CEOs of these big new startup companies shown there. They were the ones that bought the painting on the wall. Unbelievable, unbelievable. They never said anything about the work on the walls, but I have to assume they're going to mill around a little bit. I mean, who would have expected that? But just being at the, again, right place at the right time.

PW: Yeah, this is extraordinary.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 31>

PW: I'm going to change gears, I think we're going towards, back to some Japanese American stuff. In 1988, there was the passage of the Civil Liberties Act, which awarded Japanese Americans reparations and redress.

RO: Right, right.

PW: And I know that there was a story... well, first of all, were you at all involved in the redress movement when that was happening in the early '80s?

RO: Not... other than the fact that there was a person that had, who was a part of... what's the Nisei group?

PW: Japanese American Citizens League?

RO: Right. And they called me and they said, and they knew that I was a potter at that time. They said, "We're going to award the senators and the people that were involved in the passage of redress before the Congress. We would like to then go ahead and award them with something from the Japanese community." So they called me and said, "Is it possible that you could do this?" I said, "Well, I don't know what I can do." So then I did a piece for them to see. I said, "Well, this is what I think might work as a gift." It would be put into a handmade box to be presented at the time with the redress. So then I showed them and they said, "Wow, great. Can we have ten more?" Well, I can't remember, I guess, about ten. So then I hurriedly tried to do, a body of work. There were these particular large plates. I told them that they were all going to have some difference in the way, because of the position in the chamber of the kiln and so on, but also the way you make marks and whatever, but they were generally the same. So I finished the pieces, they came and picked them up, and then they had this thing before Congress where you have Senators and representatives that were then awarded, they were instrumental in having the redress for Americans.

PW: Was this the Fresno JACL?

RO: Yeah. Well, they were the ones that contacted me, so apparently it was okay, I guess they responded then to the national and said, "Well, this is what we're doing."

PW: Did you go to the ceremony?

RO: No. I thought they might invite me or something, but no. So it happened and so then it was one of those things where, again, being in the right place at the right time, I never would have expected that.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 32>

PW: How about when you received your redress check?

RO: Well, that was a part of, that was helping acquire this space.

PW: Okay, tell me the story.

RO: Okay. Well, what had happened was, I was working in an upstairs loft on H Street on the other side of the tracks, and then while I was working there, what had happened was that then I was doing a body of work and still producing work from the galleries in San Francisco. But meanwhile, then my youngest daughter Miye was going to Bates College in Maine, and she was a Japanese culture major, I can't remember. So then she and her small class, during midterms, was going to go to all the sites they could go to, former sites for the relocation of all these Japanese... and they had gone to Gila. So then after that, about a month later, she says, "Dad, you've got to go to Gila." And here it had been fifty years later, I'd forgotten about that. So I had no desire to go there. It's been, so many years have passed. Said, "No, you've got to do what you've got to do," so then we contacted... what's the guy's name? He's from Glendale, Arizona, he's kind of the person you contact when you go through the Bureau of Indian Affairs because it's on the Pima people's property, but then got the okay with the Department of Interior, and encountered this person who was Japanese American who had been there for a short time until he went into the army. So he's been honored as a part of, instrumental in this thing. So we contacted him and we flew there and he picked us up. We got this van and we drove down to the site and there was a gate that's locked and so on, you walk in there and you're looking at the site. Did I talk about this site? Yeah, but it was the whole experience of being overwhelmed by the smell of sagebrush, oh my goodness, I remember this.

So what happened was I came back after the visit with my daughter, and I was in my studio, the other studio, and I said, "I want to do something." I know they're not going to be paintings, I think they had to be drawings, because drawings are very fragile. They're immediate, and I think this reflects on the moment of that experience. So I'm doing all these drawing, and we're taking watercolor paper, four hundred pound watercolor paper, and I would then size it, because I knew that I'd be working the surface a lot, other than acrylic and other materials. So then I did these drawings of what I remembered and some of the photographs that I'd taken, and I had them on the studio wall, and I was doing research at the library, Dorothea Lange photographs and that kind of thing, and trying to get images. Because I didn't have any images of what I looked like, what my brothers looked like. And so I said, "I want to show them an example of that. And so I did this, and then it happened that the director of the museum here, the Fresno museum, said, "Hey, what are you doing, Robert?" I said, "Well, I'm doing this body of work that I thought I would do." He said, "Well, I'd like to see it." So she came up there, and she looked at it and she didn't say anything at all. She was getting ready to move and she said, "Can the museum borrow these drawings?" Meanwhile what had happened was that I found the drawings individually did not tell the story that there's a narrative about your experience as an internee about this experience that you had about going to the dike and using that, or going to have dinner at the, standing in line, or the train that you saw. So then what happened was that I start putting these papers, drawings together like, of course, that's what it is. So now these drawings are all put together in ways, in sequences of two or three that says what really I experienced. Whereas the individual drawings did not do that. it was very interesting how that happens, the visual narrative that you can talk about, but it doesn't really say what you experienced.

PW: So they were exhibited at the Fresno Art Museum?

RO: They were exhibited at the Fresno Art Museum, they were part of a show called, it was about, they had a traveling show of Anne Frank. So they had all the big cultures, I mean, genocide, but there were pieces that were shown. So since then it's been shot time and time again in various places. In fact, then, what's the woman in San Francisco or the Bay Area that is interested? I noticed at the Japanese National Museum in Los Angeles, I said, "I have these drawings, I would like to donate them to the museum, of my experience." They were not interested. They said, "Well, we're not quite sure." The curator changed over a period of time, but also the person who is the... what's her name? She has, in Oakland, she has some kind of a Japanese American thing that deals with the experience, she had come down when Fresno had the big show at the college about the internment.

PW: Fresno State?

RO: Right. There was a big show and speakers, and she said, "Gee, I really like these," and so on. She says, "I would be interested in having this." I don't know what their institution would be to do with that, because they're not as big as the National Museum, they're not as well-known, so they're still here.

PW: Korematsu.

RO: Yeah, the Korematsu, that's what it is. You may know more about them than I do.

PW: But there's connection to this building with the redress, am I correct?

RO: Oh, yes, yes. We're talking about the money.

PW: The painting, the drawings are also...

RO: I'm sorry, yeah. Some friends were looking for studio space, we looked on the buildings the city owned, and we contacted City Hall and we found that this was the building, if you can imagine this thing with no walls. This is twelve thousand square feet of space, and it was called the Bus Barn, and it had all these roll up doors because the transit companies would use these to transport to the outlying areas of Fresno.

PW: Buses or the...

RO: Well, private transport as well as I think eventually Greyhound maybe used them, or one of them. But anyway, so as a result, things happened, they then closed it down, and when they built the new city hall, they had all these furniture, came out to the tables here, old computers, old cars, this and that, stored back in here, and so we went, "I wonder if we can go ahead and acquire this building." So we went before the city council and says, "We would like to start an art-related activity downtown, and we would like this building to be the central of all the activity and so on. How is it possible to acquire this building?" They said, "Well, we're not quite sure." We contacted the redevelopment agency and talked to them about this building. They said, "Well, no, it's used as storage." And then eventually, one person said, "Well, we're not quite sure. We'd like to retain this whole block because we'd like to entice a hotel to come down here and build, so we want to keep it on hold." So I said, "I don't think we can do that." So we kept after them, and what happens was the idea of the hotel fell through because a bank acquired a part of this space to use as a headquarters, so now the space becomes much smaller. And so we went back with them and they said, "Well, we'd like you to go ahead and contain the asphalt roof." So we foamed the roof, take the paint outside and do this, do that, whatever. Because at that time, thirty thousand people were working downtown. At five, five-thirty, six o'clock, they all jump in their cars and head home. They said, "We want to do something different." So we said, "Let's go ahead, once we acquire this space, turn this thing into a destination where they can have a drink or stop in and look at some artwork before they head home." And so then we said, "How do we do this?" So then once we acquired the space, developed the space, said, "Let's call it ArtHop." So then we put out fliers at the hotel, Barnes & Noble, wherever people gathered, they say, "This is what's happening the first Thursday of every month." Nobody came downtown, I mean, for years on end. Nobody wanted to come down south of Shaw. I mean, it's very interesting how the dynamics in terms of the relationship of downtown, the only people who came downtown was for jury duty or something like that. But we kept at it, open every first Thursday for years.

1995, that's when we started ArtHop. I mean, I talked to people that come to ArtHop, said, "Gee, I didn't know you guys were doing this." I said, "Yeah, we've been doing this since '95." "'95?" Even then, we've got the arts council, Fresno Arts Council, to be a part of this by doing the advertising and the email blast and so on. And even they've tried to claim this whole business of ArtHop, and so everybody wants to take credit for it. So then just recently I've been talking to the council member for this district. I said, "We've been at this for all these years, and we've tried to go and create a group of art-related activities in a central place." We encouraged the other people to come down here and occupy some of these spaces, and so I'm trying, I'm in conversations now with this person saying, "Can we notify, can Fresno define this as a gallery district?" And he said, "Well, we're not quite sure," so he was supposed to call me on Friday. [Laughs] Because all these breweries came up over there, just a block away, now everybody knows that it's the brewery district. So I said, "Well, why can't we have a gallery district?" Anyway.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 33>

PW: So I have several, a few more closing questions. This is a personal family question. I know that you have three daughters. Tell me their names and the order of birth.

RO: Okay. Amy is the oldest.

PW: And she was born in...

RO: She was born in Europe, Munich. And Piet is next, the middle daughter, and Miye.

PW: And Piet and Miye were both born in Fresno?

RO: Piet was born in Oakdale and Miye was born here. But Oakdale is that one year that I taught there.

PW: And what do your three daughters do now? What are their occupations?

RO: Well, Amy is a professor at USC in art history, and Piet is kind of an individual contractor for training horses, equestrian riders and so on, she's been doing that. Plus the fact that she got an MFA up at the Art Institute at one point, and she just got into the horse business, and that pretty much over. But she's now back painting again, she's, yeah, a good painter. And Miye works for PayPal, she's become a big deal for PayPal. But she's been all over. She started out in the Bay Area, different places.

PW: And Piet has a role in the running of this space here that we're in now? Well, we're your gallery right now, but right next door there's the Downtown Art Gallery. Can you explain Piet's role in that?

RO: Well, when the other partner decided that she wanted to sell her space, because it's all based on an art-related contract where you can't start a garage or whatever, we acquired the funds and energy and whatever is necessary to then take over that space. The only stipulation we have is that they have, on a monthly basis, once a month, that you do something as an art-related activity, whether it be a gallery or performance and so on. So that's what they've done, and they've taken that over to completely revive the area, just made a difference.

PW: So they participate monthly in the Art Hop that you helped start?

RO: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 34>

PW: Well, this is kind of the little closing kinds of questions that I usually ask. What do you think are some of the longer term effects that being in, living through World War II and having family that were immigrants experiencing the incarceration, all of those things. How do you think that's affected you personally?

RO: The one thing I've come to understand, especially with doing something that's very, very personal. Even with teaching, as much as I love teaching, and I taught for thirty-seven years in the public school system, and I loved every moment. That's a relationship and you try to do the best possible job you can and try to instill the whole idea about what art is, because I think we come in with a sense about what we believed to be the case. And I think that it's too easy to assign assignments and so on that are maybe in many ways unrelated to this whole business of understanding the cultural aspects of what art has done for people. I've taken on that responsibility with my own work, that I�m wanting to go ahead and make sure that the work that I produce is not a... it's about questioning what I do. I often have a conversation with myself, but as I'm making work, understanding that I have a particular view about what I want to do also that I want to go ahead and move my work forward to become a better painter. This is why I call myself a practicing painter, because I think it's something that, the word "artist" comes with a lot of ego attached to and so on, so I like to use the term as, I'm a practicing painter, that's what I am. Practiced my craft and that's what I do.

So I have these conversations with myself about as you're making work, and you come up with ideas about them, if this is then, if you're okay with it, because you will know if it's done for the right reasons or the wrong reasons. And because you're making this very personal decision about what you're doing, it's very easy to be influenced by so many things that changes and moves you away from who you are, that I don't know artists are able to understand themselves that way. So I found that then we have... because there's no doubt that whatever we do, we have expectations of ourselves. That's understood, that's the nature we have. Plus then the fact then that other people have expectations of you and who you are, and what you do. So there are all these things, so as you then move into something that is so private and so personal, can we then move from that to something that's a little bit more? Because I think too often what happens is that with the expectations, we have a tendency to compromise ourselves and stay in the same place that we don't allow ourselves because the motivation about who we are, what we think is right, or maybe it's because of the fact that your work sells or whatever. I'm a firm believer that I have this one chance, and trying to move myself from where I am, because I look at my sketchbooks, I said, "Gee, this is where I was ten years ago, fifteen years ago. I never expected to be painting the paintings that I... and I owe that to myself and I tell a lot of young kids, "What happens is that you have to go ahead and reach that point where you are venturing forward however it may be. It may be full of mistakes, it may be full of not understanding and so on. But you've made that attempt, that has now moved you away from where you were before, and that's that expectation." So then that's the discussion that I have, because I know that if I'm doing something, all of a sudden, I've seen this before, or I've done this, or something. And so I try to move myself and present some questions about what I believe my work, how it should move and what it should represent. I'm not sure about that, and I think the idea of having questions is very important for me. I come in here and I pull my car in here and I'm shut away from the world.

And all I have is that and the... there was a moment where I used to tell my beginning students, I said, "I want you to take a pencil and write your name on this piece of paper." And they would write it very legibly because I said, "Write your name on it." I said, "Okay," and erase it, "write your name again. Erase it, write your name again. Erase it, let's do it fifty times. The paper is torn, there are smudges, you can hardly tell, and guess what's happened to your name? It's just a mark." I said, "That's where I want you to be. Now we can start talking about art and where we are and where we think we should go." Because we're always back over here not wanting to make mistakes, not wanting to do things that are kind of... not understanding, and you have these motivations and reasons why you stay there. It's only when you start to move a little bits, it may be a process, it may be a material, I don't know what. And this is why I had moved into chalk, and the fact that I'm using a drawing tool as the material for my paintings. And so that even though people look at... because it's on canvas, assume it's a painting. So then I tell them no, if you consider it chalk or if you consider it charcoal or whatever, as a painting process, you'll probably say no, that's a drawing tool.

And I want to go and move my work where I'm questioning these things about what I do so that it opens up a whole volume of thoughts that I have. Because I know where I've been before, and I know that I can do this, and I know I'm successful at it. But then again, I have one chance at it. I'm going to (be gone) in a few years, I want to see how far this can go. And I think that's basically the motivation because it gives me purpose to come down here and work. And that's what I think an awful lot, otherwise I'd be sitting at home getting fat and mowing the lawn or whatever, so on. You don't do those kind of things, but this is a very personal kind of special moment that I think art is that, whether you're a writer, poet, composer or whatever. People say, "Think out of the box." We don't do that, we don't think out of the box. We'd like to, we appreciate people who do that, but we don't do that for ourselves because we're limited by all the expectations that people have on who we are and where we are in life with the job, family, kids, and so on. So I'm fortunate to be in the place I am today, and the fact that I have this space here, and the means to be able to go ahead and talk to myself and try to go ahead and motivate myself and make some work that I believe is important, important to me. I don't expect people to understand what I do or like what I do, but every so often, someone comes along and says, "Hey, Robert, I kind of like your work, but I don't understand it." And so then if you can have that moment of conversation, in five minutes, they say, "Oh." So then they walk out the door, "Let's go to Robert's studio." So they already have a built in commitment to what they believe they want to do. I don't ask people to come up, they come up because it's either a social issue or gathering, or they want to look at work. And so if I can be a little part of the advancement of Fresno's culture just a tiny, tiny bit, that's important. That's why... I don't know if that answers, more than you want to hear? [Laughs]

PW: That's the most beautiful way to end this interview.

RO: Oh, thank you.

PW: Thank you so much for your hospitality.

RO: Yeah, you're certainly welcome. I've enjoyed it very much.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.