Densho Digital Archive - Ernest Uno Interview (denshovh-uernest-01-0013)

<Begin Segment 13>

LD: Your father took up painting really late in life. Tell me about that painting he did, when he did it.

EU: I'm not... you know, it surprised all of us that Dad took up painting from, I guess when he was bout seventy is when he actually started. Well, my premise is that the prolonged internment, and internment per se, as such, I think broke the spirit of many of the Issei men. Whether it was in internment or evacuation, and these men were taken from their homes, taken from their families at a time when they were at the apex of their productivity. They struggled, and they were at the point where they were achieving, and all of a sudden this was all taken away from them. They were broken spiritually. And Dad was not an exception. But after the war, I know he piddled with various things, never got into anything, until finally he was of age when he could begin to collect social security, then he was considered retired. He never owned anything as a result, therefore he was shunted between his children, the families of his children, those of us, we kept him for a while, as long as we felt we could stand him, then we'd shunt him off to another brother who kept him as such.

And it was while he was with one of my younger brothers, and he, I guess, decided he wanted to take up sumi-e, a skill he had learned as a teenager in Japan. And he had learned well, I guess, learning his characters, use of the charcoal brush. So he began to practice his characters, then he began to practice drawing flowers and such. He always had a talent for drawing, because one of the ways he made a living before the war was to be able -- because he was interested in entomology -- was to replicate with pen and ink the anatomy of bugs: beetles, aphids, you name it, he drew them to scale, and to the last wingtip, perfect. And these were often used, photographed, and then put on folders. I think the various insecticide companies, they'd use, the company had a black flag, I think, they used some of his drawings, they reproduced them. And example, the kind of beetles and such that their insecticide killed. So anyway, he was talented anyway in drawing.

Then he began to do enough that people in Boulder, Colorado, I guess there was a public park there that they had art classes. And he started teaching, and he taught sumi in Colorado. Then he made a name for himself somewhat, and then he came to San Diego, lived with us. And at the Y, he taught art classes, taught sumi. And a number of people who remember getting lesson from him would proudly show his drawing.

LD: How about this painting?

ED: I'm not sure, but he... I had asked him if he would do a school for me at some time, and that was when he was living here in Hawaii with my sister Kay. Then he went back to California to stay with Edison. And it was while he was with Edison that he had drawn two scrolls, two or three, I think. There was a couple like this, and he sent them back to us, one for us and one for Kay. And this was just his gift to us. I wish... I don't know, I think probably on a three-by-five card there is an explanation for this someplace, but I don't know where, it's filed somewhere. But if I could read Japanese, it would have told the date he had done that, and his age when he had drawn it. This was probably one of the last things that he had drawn, and his health started to go down.