Title:
Attacked Pearl Harber (Attacked Pearl Harbor (Hawaii))
Creator/Contributor:
Sugimoto, Henry
Date:
ca. 1947
Identifier:
92.97.74
Format:
painting
oil on canvas
California
Inscription:
Signed in medium, bottom left corner: H. Sugimoto, Attacked Pearl Harber [sic] Hawaii. Written on back: Attacked Pearl Harbor/22"
x 18"
Description:
Stretched and framed. Family reacting to news of Pearl Harbor attack. Older man, with back to the viewer, sits at table bent
over a newspaper reading about the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. He wears a brown jacket and glasses and has his left hand
on the back of his head. A woman in green with white collar faces him across the red/white checked tablecloth. In the background
a younger man sits at a desk next to a lamp before a window, with his back to the viewer, and listens to the radio with his
left hand on the back of his head. He wears a white sweater with two purple stripes at the biceps.
Historical Note:
"I...turned on the radio and heard them say, 'A Jap bomber squadron has bombed Pearl Harbor; there are many casualties, and
many American battleships have been destroyed....What was going to become of us Japanese? What were we to do?" (From Henry
Sugimoto's diaries.)
When the United States entered World War II, the lives of many Japanese Americans were torn apart. Sugimoto's work after 1941
shows a dramatic transition from landscapes and still-life paintings to powerful narratives focusing on this experience.
Subject:
Pearl Harbor
Japanese
Japanese Americans
Aerial bombings