‘Signs of Home’: The art, life and wartime diary of Kamekichi Tokita

19 de Março de 2012 • Peter Kelley

Artist Kamekichi Tokita came to America from Japan in 1919 and achieved moderate success painting familiar scenes near his Seattle home—a back yard, an alley, a street market—in comfortable, muted tones reflecting the damp Northwest weather. But after years as an artist and sign painter in his adopted home, life for Tokita and his family changed forever with the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Tokita began writing a diary that day which would last throughout the war: …