Norman I. Hirose is a Nisei (second generation) Japanese American born in 1926 in Oakland, California. He grew up in Oakland and Berkeley, California. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Hirose family was removed to the Tanforan Assembly Center,… [more]

(Yoshimitsu) Bob Fuchigami is a Nisei (2nd generation) Japanese American, born in 1930 in Marysville, California. His family operated a farm prior to World War II. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he and his family were removed to the Merced… [more]

(Yoshimitsu) Bob Fuchigami is a Nisei (second generation) Japanese American, born in 1930 in Marysville, California. His family operated a farm prior to World War II. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he and his family were removed to the Merced… [more]

May K. Sasaki is a Nisei (2nd generation) Japanese American. She was born Kimiko May Nakamura in 1937 in Seattle. Her parents ran a small grocery store in Nihonmachi (Japantown). She had just turned six years old when Japanese Americans were ordered… [more]

Minidoka incarceration camp, near Twin Falls in southern Idaho, was one of 10 incarceration camps run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) that held citizens and non-citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. The 33,000 acres of arid desert… [more]

Barbie—who is today the most famous doll in the world—was based on Lilli, a sexy and sassy German doll first produced in 1955. Co-founder of Mattel Inc., Ruth Hander transformed the Teutonic doll from floozy to fashion queen for American girls… [more]

This photo shows a wall covered in "tags" and "throws" along a commonly-traveled side street that runs through the SoHo area of Manhattan, which is one of New York City's major museum and art gallery districts. Tags were the first form of graffiti… [more]

A main goal for almost all graffiti artists is to be seen by other artists or appreciative peers, as well as the typical New York City passers-by. In the mid-1980s, after more than 15 years effort, the New York City Transit Authority was successful… [more]

From left to right, this photograph shows four graffiti artists at work on a collaborative "production" in a Bronx schoolyard: DEATH, NIC 1, MEX, and NOX. A "production" is a planned, multi-artist work typically unified by a visual theme in the… [more]

In graffiti artists' terminology, this work is called a "masterpiece," or more commonly, a "piece." It was painted on a Brooklyn high school's retaining wall in the mid-1990s, and was one among about 50 such works in the schoolyard (sections of the… [more]