Interviews

1. Getting measles at the camp

2. His sister’s reaction to the camp

3. His mother’s money belt

4. Differences between Parents

5. His father’s American Dream

6. Allyship after camp

7. Coming back from camp

8. Being an outsider

9. Running Japanese store

10. Starting out in Art

11. About Orange Crate Label

12. His mother’s experience of the camp

13. “I did what I wanted to do”

Sakoguchi,Ben

(b. 1938) Japanese American painter & printmaker

His mother’s money belt

We were inland a little bit so there wasn’t a big Japanese community there so the people in LA I think got to Manzanar and they sent us to um, to Poston Arizona.

Literally they had to stuff um, straw into mattresses to make a, you know, to make the mattress. My mother uh, really was quite brilliant, alright? She took a money belt, made it herself, put a thousand dollars in cash in it, and wore it for three and a half years.

Without that money, we come back from camp, we could not start the store and luckily, my mother was a citizen. If she wasn’t a citizen, people understand this, she could not, we could not own property.

Arizona concentration camps generations imprisonment incarceration Nisei Poston concentration camp United States World War II camps

Date: September 8, 2011

Location: California, US

Interviewer: John Esaki, Kris Kuramitsu

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

Interviewee Bio

Ben Sakoguchi, born in 1938, is a painter and printmaker who has lived in the Los Angeles area his entire life, except for the time when he and his family were incarcerated in Poston Arizona. After studying painting in the 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles, he developed a distinctive style that is rooted in pairing a narrative painting tradition with a pop culture vocabulary. He is best known for his long running “Orange Crate Label” series, using the classic crate label format to explore diverse subject matter and to combine them in a way that allows for both sharp critique and wry humor. His work is deeply and politically engaged, and he takes a deep delight in the craft and beauty of painting itself. Sakoguchi was a professor at Pasadena City College for nearly 35 years. Visit his website at bensakoguchi.com. (Oct. 2011)