Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani exhibition at Wing Luke Museum in Seattle

My husband and I recently spent our vacation in Seattle, Washington. We spent a week visiting with relatives and sight-seeing. As part of our trip, we went to Bainbridge Island. Unfortunately, the Japanese American WWII Memorial is not yet built, so we'll have to return someday to visit. We did make a trip to the Bainbridge Island Historical Society. It was great to see that they really make an effort to tell the story of Japanese Americans on the island - their importance, their innocence, and their return. I wondered if they did that because we were obviously Asian, but I was happy to hear them make the same introduction to non-Asian visitors who came afterwards.

We also paid a trip to the International District where we stopped by to check out Uwajimaya, briefly went in to the historic Panama Hotel's Tea House, and the Wing Luke Asian Museum. Next time we visit, we'll need to go back to the Panama Hotel and take a tour of the old Japanese bath house. It was really interesting to see the old artifacts and photos on display. There's also a really cool map of the old Seattle Japantown. I wish I had remembered to take a photo of it.

At the Wing Luke, they have an exhibition of the history of Asian Americans in the United States. There is one main section about the WWII JA experience which they incorporate with great quotes from oral histories contributed by Densho.

They also had up a temporary exhibition about JA artist Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani which was curated by artist Roger Shimomura. The exhibition included two rooms of artwork by Mirikitani, plus excerpts from the documentary film "The Cats of Mirikitani".

It was a fascinating exhibition. In particular, it was interesting to see the pieces in person because you could really see the detail and the materials he used. Many are executed using ball-point pen and crayons. Others are collage works that use images from magazines and other printed materials which he likely found discarded.

He has produced a lot of colorful, cute works depicting cats...but it sounded like those were produced more because they were what people would buy. The twists and turns of his life - being incarcerated in Tule Lake, having lost family in Hiroshima, being homeless...and the anger he feels as a result are reflected in his other works.