Interviews

1. Always drawing

2. Larry designing chairs in the camp

3. Larry’s fishing skill

4. Mother’s reaction to Larry's daredevil racing

5. Larry and President Clinton

6. Corvette Hall of Fame

Nakamura,Grace Aiko

Sister of automotive designer Larry Shinoda

Mother’s reaction to Larry's daredevil racing

I*: And your mother’s reaction to this life of daredevil racing?

Well she would always say, because he [Larry] got a lot of speeding tickets, and Yosh will remember too, she would always say, ‘Don’t step on the gas, don’t step on the gas.’ Those were his last words every time he would leave the house. ‘Don’t step on the gas.’ She was, you know, very patient person and very supportive.

I: So she must have ultimately been proud of his?

Oh yes, she was very proud of his. I was thinking too with, you know, my father being an electrical engineer, how proud he would have been, you know, at what Larry has become.

* “I” indicates an interviewer (John Esaki)

Date: September 9, 2011

Location: California, US

Interviewer: John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Grace Aiko (Shinoda) Nakamura was 15 years old when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. On May 16, 1942, her family of seven boarded a train at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and was sent to the Manzanar concentration camp in California.

In Manzanar, Grace’s younger brother Larry designed for his mother and grandmother two chairs made from recycled wooden toilet crates—complete with arm rests and reclining backs. They became a camp “sensation” attracting many admiring spectators. Larry later became a world-renowned designer whose designs for the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray and the Boss 429 Mustang remain highly admired.

In spring of 1944 Grace, Larry and their mother left Manzanar on a bus and moved to Grand Junction, Colorado. The Quakers American Friends Service Japanese American Student Relocation Project awarded Grace a scholarship to the University of Redlands and she became the first Japanese American college student to return to California, graduating with Honors. The day after graduating, she started a teaching career in the Pasadena School District--the first Japanese American hired. She eventually earned two Masters Degrees and continued a career in education and fine arts. She is married to Yosh Nakamura, a college professor of art, and has three children. (September 2012)