Grandpa Oishi
Jeanie Kashima
11 x 14 inches
2021
ARTIST STATEMENT
This photo shows Seizo Oishi, first generation Japanese, Issei standing in front of one of the barracks. This photo was taken by one of his sons who joined the Armed Forces. He came here as a young man and worked in the farming fields for a number of years. He was able to save enough money to buy land in Richmond, California and start a wholesale carnation nursery. He got married and had eight children, my mother was one of those children. Like all first generation immigrants he worked hard and did everything to be a good citizen of the United States. It would never occur to him as well as the other Issei’s to want to do any harm to the people of this country or to this government. To find himself behind barbed wires and forced to leave his home and business must have been so bewildering and painful to him. He, like most of the Issei’s rarely talked about the evacuation. The expression on his face is not one of anger, but of pain.