<Begin Segment 5>

FK: Now, you'd, obviously you decided you want to go beyond just high school, and when you went to the UW, was there a specific thing you were interested in doing since they told you not to go into art? Was there a...

SO: I guess when I think of all those different stages that I went through, some of it was pure accident, and I can remember that I was finishing somewhat my graduate studies, the question, what do you do next? And one of the things that I feel quite happy about is being accepted by the others, other non Japanese, let's say, in positions, seeking positions or being asked for, the interaction, and I feel pretty good about that because I did it. I don't think it was any magic in my part, but just a matter of maybe how one presents oneself and that there's at the end, call it a reward, but a completion of a cycle that you began. And so when you mentioned about not going into art, maybe I've come, circled around a couple of times. I got into art history, in which it doesn't involve my making of art, but it was teaching of the art history as a cultural thing, and I enjoyed that part of it because it allowed me -- and this is the curious thing -- it allowed me to deal with my Japanese-ness. I didn't, I had maybe one course in Japanese art, or Asian art, but I became more interested in it, even to the point of finally teaching towards the end of my teaching career, about the evacuation, then called, of the art that was then created within the confines of the, of the camps, as well as the making of art beyond that, and that's what's happening now. I think we're getting more and more interest in people, the young Sanseis, Yonseis who now make art, but it's an art that they did not experience. It's their kind of collective recollection, or someone told them about this, so that the playing rules are different, I think. Yet, and I remember soon after I could retire, ten some odd years ago, I said to myself, I want to make something that is going to be an expression of this incarceration. And so I made a series of little paintings, one leaving the island, one coming home, one we did in the camps and so forth, kind of a conglomeration of things that I experienced. I wanted to put that down before it got away from me, because it's too easy to say, oh well, someone else did it, and I still have that. It's not gonna be a great piece of art, but it's kind of a document of what I viewed. I can remember one little image that I captured, and that is we all went on the ferry, and you know, when you board a ferry at the automobile level, that opening is huge. I mean, it looks, it makes you feel that tall, and that to me suggested that our future wasn't going to be very bright, as some kind of doomsday type thing, but I'm interpreting all this only because I've thought about these things, and there's nothing magic about what I've said or information people have been, talked about these things for ages. But anyway, so I did finally get, made the full circle of going to art and then upon completion of my working years I went back and I still do some art even today, but my audience is different. Most of the people with whom I now make art are people who, like myself, worked in a field, may or may not have been related to the art field, but they made things, and we kind of get together once a week and we talk to each other about the art. It has nothing to do with other things, but we have fun at it.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.