A color drawing of the Kilauer Military Dentention Camp, barracks with mountain in distance

Online Exhibition

The Life and Work of George Hoshida

A Japanese American’s Journey

1944–1945

After Jerome Relocation Center closed at the end of June 1944, the Hoshidas were transferred to Gila River concentration camp in Arizona. George Hoshida and his family would remain at Gila River until it closed on September 28, 1945.

Hoshida and his family ended up being assigned to the larger of the two camps, Butte, in Block 61. Utilizing his carpentry skills, Hoshida obtained a large fan to create a cooling system to keep his family comfortable in the scorching Arizona summer heat. Hoshida found work as a pantry man in the mess hall and was later promoted to cooks helper. When not working, he found time to enroll in the Deforest Courses in Electronics, TV and Radio Servicing and Repairs where he learned electrical wiring. Hoshida later used his new talents to build a radio on which the family listened to popular shows of the day, such as the Lone Ranger.

Life at Gila River was easier and more relaxed for the Hoshida family since the absence of restricting fences and guard towers allowed for greater freedom. Personnel managing the camp were more sympathetic and understanding and inmates were allowed to shop in Phoenix and to have picnics in the desert. However, whatever sense of normalcy Hoshida was able to create at Gila River was not to last long. On July 22, 1944, Taeko, Hoshida’s oldest daughter, died after suffering a convulsion in a bathtub in which she was unintentionally left unattended in Waimano Home on Oahu.

George Hoshida and his family left Gila River in November of 1945 for Santa Ana, California where they lived across from an airfield and blimp hanger for three weeks. In December of 1945, the Hoshida’s returned home to Hilo, Hawai‘i, debarking from Wilmington, California on a troop ship called the Shawnee.

Ongoing

The December 7, 1941 attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawai‘i by the nation of Japan plunged the United States into World War II and irrevocably changed the course of American history. But for thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry living in the Hawaiian Islands and the mainland, the war highlighted the great divide between their American ideals and their unfair treatment based solely on race. 

The Japanese first immigrated to Hawai‘i in 1885 to work as laborers in the burgeoning plantations. By the time of World War II, the Japanese immigrants and the subsequent generations born on the Islands had developed extensive communities and demonstrated their centrality to the Hawaiian economy. They worked on plantations, owned shops, practiced trades, founded churches and temples, and organized sports leagues, Japanese language schools, and martial arts clubs—all characteristic of a stable and growing community, a community that was making a commitment to a new homeland on the Islands. However, the United States had long been suspicious of immigrants who “looked” different. Hawai‘i was not yet a state, but on the Mainland numerous laws and court decisions created a hierarchy that limited the Japanese immigrant’s ability to become an American. 

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, martial law was declared in Hawai‘i and Japanese American community leaders were singled out as “suspicious.” Although the Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i had posed no prior threat, community leaders were thought to be potentially harmful to United States security despite the fact that no evidence existed to link Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i with the acts of Japan, except by virtue of ancestry. By December 9, over 120 community leaders were taken from their homes and incarcerated in Hawai‘i.¹ George Hoshida was one such person.

This microsite honors the spirit and talent of George Hoshida (1907–1985), an incarcerated artist who documented camp life with pencil and brushwork in a series of notebooks he kept between 1942 and 1945. Through examples of Hoshida’s artwork and personal correspondence with his family, this site hopes to provide insight into one individual’s incarceration experience.

The pages of this microsite are organized chronologically by the camps where George Hoshida and his family were incarcerated. Hoshida’s notebooks and letters are now part of the June Honma Collection deposited at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California. In addition to Hoshida’s personal documents, a select number of secondary sources were used to develop this site.

¹ On the mainland, over 1,000 community leaders were incarcerated in Justice Department internment camps immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In February 1942, Executive Order 9066 paved the way for the further incarceration of all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.

 

About this Site

This site was originally created and launched in 1997 as an independent class project for Development of Cultural Information Resources Using Digital Multimedia (LIS208) at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. All works displayed are owned by the Honma Collection which resides at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

All text was written specifically for this site using publications and primary source material in the collection of the Japanese American Museum. The content for the site was moved into a new microsite on janm.org in 2023. Some text/captions were updated and newer scans of the artwork were used for the expanded galleries.

Ongoing

The December 7, 1941 attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawai‘i by the nation of Japan plunged the United States into World War II and irrevocably changed the course of American history. But for thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry living in the Hawaiian Islands and the mainland, the war highlighted the great divide between their American ideals and their unfair treatment based solely on race. 

The Japanese first immigrated to Hawai‘i in 1885 to work as laborers in the burgeoning plantations. By the time of World War II, the Japanese immigrants and the subsequent generations born on the Islands had developed extensive communities and demonstrated their centrality to the Hawaiian economy. They worked on plantations, owned shops, practiced trades, founded churches and temples, and organized sports leagues, Japanese language schools, and martial arts clubs—all characteristic of a stable and growing community, a community that was making a commitment to a new homeland on the Islands. However, the United States had long been suspicious of immigrants who “looked” different. Hawai‘i was not yet a state, but on the Mainland numerous laws and court decisions created a hierarchy that limited the Japanese immigrant’s ability to become an American. 

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, martial law was declared in Hawai‘i and Japanese American community leaders were singled out as “suspicious.” Although the Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i had posed no prior threat, community leaders were thought to be potentially harmful to United States security despite the fact that no evidence existed to link Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i with the acts of Japan, except by virtue of ancestry. By December 9, over 120 community leaders were taken from their homes and incarcerated in Hawai‘i.¹ George Hoshida was one such person.

This microsite honors the spirit and talent of George Hoshida (1907–1985), an incarcerated artist who documented camp life with pencil and brushwork in a series of notebooks he kept between 1942 and 1945. Through examples of Hoshida’s artwork and personal correspondence with his family, this site hopes to provide insight into one individual’s incarceration experience.

The pages of this microsite are organized chronologically by the camps where George Hoshida and his family were incarcerated. Hoshida’s notebooks and letters are now part of the June Honma Collection deposited at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California. In addition to Hoshida’s personal documents, a select number of secondary sources were used to develop this site.

¹ On the mainland, over 1,000 community leaders were incarcerated in Justice Department internment camps immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In February 1942, Executive Order 9066 paved the way for the further incarceration of all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.

 

About this Site

This site was originally created and launched in 1997 as an independent class project for Development of Cultural Information Resources Using Digital Multimedia (LIS208) at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. All works displayed are owned by the Honma Collection which resides at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

All text was written specifically for this site using publications and primary source material in the collection of the Japanese American Museum. The content for the site was moved into a new microsite on janm.org in 2023. Some text/captions were updated and newer scans of the artwork were used for the expanded galleries.

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