calsfoundation@cals.org
April 24, 1934
Artist Henry Yuzuru Sugimoto—whose paintings chronicled the immigrant experience, including the time he and his family spent in internment camps in southern Arkansas during World War II—married Susie Tagawa in Hanford, California. In 1942, Sugimoto and his family were among the thousands of other people of Japanese ancestry who were relocated by the U.S. government to internment camps in response to the fear that Japanese Americans were threats to American security after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Sugimotos were sent first to Arkansas’s Jerome Relocation Center, arriving in October 1942. When the Jerome camp closed in June 1944, the Sugimotos were moved to the Rohwer camp, where they stayed until August 1945. This incarceration was a defining experience in Sugimoto’s life.