New Gift of Artist Takuichi Fujii’s Drawings

The following is a guest post by Kara Chittenden and Katherine Blood in the Prints & Photographs Division about a special new gift of valuable drawings.

During World War II, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated in concentration camps. Engaging in creative activities was a way for prisoners to endure significant hardships. Since photography was forbidden in the camps, incarcerated artists turned to painting and drawing to fill endless idle hours, record everyday experiences, and express their feelings.

Takuichi Fujii was born in Japan. In 1906, as a teenager, he moved to Seattle. After a few years, he returned to Japan where he met and married Fusano Marumachi, daughter of a lawyer. He returned to Seattle in 1914, sent for Fusano who arrived in 1916, and together they raised daughters Satoko and Masako while Takuichi was working as a fishmonger. He also established an artistic practice and was a member of Seattle’s “Group of Twelve,” which promoted the “best painting in the Northwest.” In 1936 he was one of three Japanese American artists chosen to represent Washington state in the “First National Exhibition of American Art” in New York City. Because of his interest in the No-Jury Society of Chicago, an organization that supported egalitarian and independent exhibitions, the family moved to Chicago in 1937 where he exhibited a painting at the Art Institute.

In 1940, back in Seattle, Takuichi and Fusano started a flower shop called Mary Rose Florist. Fusano took the lead role at the shop so that Takuichi could focus on his art and continue to exhibit. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 to expel Japanese Americans from the West Coast, the family was forced to sell their business and leave their home. With only six days to prepare, they packed only as much clothing, bedding, toiletries, and eating utensils as they could carry.

The Fujii family was first incarcerated at Puyallup, a temporary detention camp on the Washington State Fairgrounds. The conditions were crowded and unsanitary with some of the barracks converted from horse stalls and surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. Takuichi began documenting the incarceration experience there in an art diary composed of ink sketches and text that he later transformed into several series of watercolors. This body of work shows the many indignities of camp life including using communal toilets and being under constant surveillance, but also portrayed the rich communal life that developed with scenes of children playing, baseball games, fishing, and the celebration of theatrical and other events.

After three months at Puyallup, the family was transferred in decommissioned railroad cars to the unfinished Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho. The tar paper-covered barracks were still under construction, and the plumbing and sewage system was incomplete until January 1943. Over time security rules were relaxed and Takuichi and Fusano could leave camp to hike in the countryside where they found a baby owl that they kept as a pet. Takuichi was able to sketch outside the barbed wire and contributed some of his sketches to the “Minidoka Interlude,” a yearbook produced by incarcerees. After the War Relocation Authority permitted “indefinite leave” for work in spring 1943, Satoko left for Ogden, Utah to work and marry. Masako left to join the Women’s Army Corps. Takuichi and Fusano remained at Minidoka until October 2, 1945 and, having no home to return to in Seattle, moved first to Ogden before resettling in Chicago.

Takuichi and Fusano lived in the upstairs apartment of a house in Chicago where they took care of Masako’s son, Tom Nelson, while Satoko and her husband, Denkichi Kita, lived downstairs with their son Sandy Kita. Takuichi continued to paint until his death in 1964. His paintings and drawings were stored by Fusano, Satoko, and then by grandson and art historian Dr. Sandy Kita. Takuichi’s art was almost completely unknown outside of his family until 2017 when curator Dr. Barbara Johns assembled a traveling exhibition, “Witness to Wartime: The Painted Diary of Takuichi Fujii,” with the assistance of Dr. Kita and his wife, anthropologist Dr. Terry Kita.

In 2001 and 2002, Dr. Sandy Kita was a guest scholar for the Library of Congress “Floating World” exhibition and book that made the public fully aware of the Library’s exceptional collections of Japanese prints, drawings, and illustrated books from the Edo and Meiji periods. During that project Sandy worked closely with Reverend Shōjō Honda (1929-2015), a Senior Reference Librarian in the Library’s Asian Division who authored important bibliographies about the Japanese Pre-Meiji collections in Mathematics; Art; and Literature and Performing Arts. Sandy wrote: “Honda and I were translation partners for over 30 years. Our final work together was translating my grandfather Takuichi Fujii’s Art Diary. Honda brought to this last project not only unmatchable skills in accessing information but also a personal knowledge of both the artist’s pre-war environment in Japan and the United States and post-war one in the Japanese American community. Consequently, we could produce a translation of this crucial document in a study of this artist that captured his voice to a degree not likely to be repeated.”

In 2024, Sandy and Terry Kita offered to the Library a generous gift of fifteen of Fujii’s original watercolor and ink drawings on paper. The first ten were given in recognition of Shōjō Honda’s special contributions to Sandy’s work on Japanese art history. They added an additional five drawings to “express deep gratitude for Katherine Blood’s guidance” in support of the Floating World work. Katherine responded to this exceptional gift, saying: “Takuichi Fujii’s beautiful drawings resonate meaningfully with culture and history. They show Fujii’s fluency with a variety of subjects and artistic styles from realism to modernist abstraction and eloquently convey his personal experiences before, during, and after World War II incarceration.  The Library of Congress is honored and grateful for the chance to preserve and share these artworks.”

Learn More:

• View more images related to Japanese American World War II Incarceration in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.
• Watch “Finding Pictures: Lens on American History — Japanese American World War II Incarceration,” a webcast on P&P collections related to WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans.
• Consult the following publication: Johns, Barbara. The hope of another spring : Takuichi Fujii, artist and wartime witness. Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2017].
• Read more about Takuichi Fujii in this Densho Encyclopedia entry by Barbara Johns.