The University Arts Collection Committee and Albertsons Library Special Collections and Archives invite the community to the unveiling of “Nisei Trilogy,” a series of three lithographs with images by Roger Shimomura and text by Lawrence Matsuda. The series explores the imprisonment of people of Japanese descent in camps across the U.S., including the Minidoka camp in Idaho, during World War II. The U.S. government held Shimomura and Matsuda – then children – and their families at Minidoka.
The event will begin with a viewing of the prints at 4:30 p.m. followed by remarks at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 2. It will take place in Special Collections and Archives on the second floor of Albertsons Library. A reception with light refreshments will follow. Masks are required on campus.
More about the artists:
Roger Shimomura
Serving as an arts educator for most of his life, Shimomura, a third-generation Japanese American, was born three years before President Roosevelt’s executive order mandated the imprisonment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. A native of Seattle, he attended the University of Washington and earned a graduate degree from Syracuse University. He began teaching at Kansas University in 1969. Shimomura retired in 2004 after 35 years in Lawrence.
Lawrence Matsuda
Lawrence Y. Matsuda was born in the Minidoka prison camp in 1945 and grew up during the post-WWII era when racism and hatred toward people of Japanese and Japanese-American heritage was rampant. Matsuda attended the University of Washington where he earned his BA, MA, and Ph.D. He served six years in the U.S. Army Reserve while finishing his education. He had a long career as an educator. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Matsuda fought against social injustice and was an integral part of a growing Asian American movement that in 1972 elected Washington state’s first Asian American State Legislator, John Eng.