The following is an interview with Ibuki Hibi Lee, the editor of Peaceful Painter: Memoir of an Issei Woman Artist. The book is an autobiography written by Ibuki Hibi Lee's mother, artist Hisako Hibi. Ibuki's father (Matsusaburo Hibi) and mother taught art at the Topaz internment camp (in Utah) during World War II.

The book tells the story of Hisako Hibi - from her arrival in the United States, through her internment at Tanforan and Topaz, the loss of her husband after the war, her struggle to work and raise a family, and her never-ending love of art.

Please go to the following location to find some pictures of Ms. Hibi's artwork on the AACP website.
http:/asianamericanbooks.com/hibi.htm

Ibuki, please tell us a little bit about yourself - your background (education and work history). Were you blessed with your parent's talents for art or are you just an art enthusiast like many of us? Did you come to find your own eye for art?
As far back as I can remember, I can recall my mother and father holding their colorful palettes and painting on canvas boards. They loved to paint, and I noted that they spent inordinate amounts of quiet time in solitary, intense concentration. These were pleasant, peaceful times, and my parents did not need company to be happy.

I sought a career field with more daily social interaction and graduated from U. C. Berkeley and became a physical therapist in 1960. My connection to art has been in the realm of art appreciation and the legacy of my parents that art transverses time and space through all human cultures.

Tell us a little bit about your parents, especially things that were not included in the book. What influenced the artwork of your mother and father? Were they classically trained and was this part of a long family traditions? It sounded like an interesting partnership of two well-matched intelligent and creative people. This did not sound like your typical first generation couple's experience. Care to expand on this thought?
My mother was happily living with her devout Zen Buddhist grandmother in her farming village in Fukui-ken and reluctantly, came to the United States in 1920 to join her parents here when she was thirteen years old. With the realization of newfound opportunities unavailable in Japan, she longed to remain here. Her father had been successful enough in his southern California business to return to Japan in 1925 and to build his family a home there. My mother was the eldest in her family and disobeyed her father, refusing to return to Japan, knowing that she would become the caretaker of her five younger siblings. So she remained totally alone in San Francisco afterwards, working as a schoolgirl to complete her high school education. Since her language ability was limited, she was drawn to painting, as a means of self-expression. Throughout her life, she found "consolation" in painting.

My father came to Seattle in 1906 as a nineteen-year-old student, supported by his silk industry business family in Shiga-ken. He would relate to me his dislike for business and the constant attention given to counting money. He was the youngest in a large family and sought adventure in the western world. He worked as a handyman and also wrote articles for Japanese language newspapers here in the U.S. Later, he discovered his deep interest and love for painting and attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) for eleven years.

My parents met at the art school and married in 1930 with Chiura Obata as their best man. My mother would tell me that she had many Japanese suitors in business and farming at that time, but my father was the only one, who understood art and would allow her to continue to paint after marriage.

Please tell us a bit about the quality, styles, and importance of your mother's work? How is your mother's work regarded in the art world? What individual characteristics made your mother's artwork stand out from others? Were there any hidden meanings or secret symbolism in her art that your mother told you about or that you discovered on your own? The book mentioned that some of the artwork was left with a neighbor before you left for the internment camps - what ever happened to the paintings, were you able to recover them all?
My mother displayed her paintings in Bay Area major museums, shows, and exhibitions before World War II. She recovered only four paintings from this period. The Hayward neighbor, who had stored some paintings, had died by the time of her return to the Bay Area in 1954. Michael Brown, an Asian art author (Views from Asian California, 1920-1965) and collector, has found a few of my parents' paintings at garage sales, flea markets, and Internet sites.

As my mother developed her ability "to put down paint" on canvas and as her understanding of life deepened, she was able to paint in an abstract style, relying only on the art elements of color, form, and line in order to express her feelings and thoughts. She believed in the power of art to create peace of mind, and she wanted to convey a good feeling to onlookers, who would take the time to study her paintings. She was able to express herself better via abstract works than through a realistic scene, where a viewer might become more engrossed in the subject matter than in the art aspects.

My mother's artwork is limited in its quantity (several hundred paintings) and its outreach. In her last decades she had her own style of painting, which no other artist could duplicate. She sincerely and humbly continued painting with her belief in "art for art's sake," and most of her general recognition has occurred after her passing in 1991.

Tell us about the making of the book - When did you start working on the project? When did your mother start writing her memoirs - Some of it reads like a diary, did she take notes when she was interned? What was the most pleasurable thing about working on this book? What was the worst? What was left out of this book that you wish you had included?
My mother began writing her memoirs in the early 1950's, as a children's book. She continued to work as a dressmaker, paint, travel, and still return to her writing, as the years passed into the 1980's. I think that she did not want to forget what she had experienced in her lifetime and wrote objectively for others to read also. She did keep a diary during part of her internment.

I started to edit her memoirs in 1999, transferring them on to my old Apple computer, when my mother had her retrospective exhibit at the new Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, "A Process in Reflection." Languishing in a furoshiki (a cloth wrapper), I rediscovered the memoirs and took more interest in my own mother's legacy to me.

Kimi Kodani Hill informed me about the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program after her successful book publication. I applied in 2000 and received a grant but became too ill in 2001 to work on the manuscript. I applied again in 2003 and was provided with a grant and professional assistance. Mark Johnson, Professor of Art at San Francisco State University, was my mentor, who enthusiastically

supported the project. The publisher, Heyday Books, gave me the editorial assistance needed to form the book and make it a reality. I also was given a new PC through a friend. Without all of the help I might have been at a loss, trying to publish the book privately. Instead, I had a very pleasurable experience, especially since I was retired now. The worst thing is an error in the date of one painting in the book, Spring #2, Hayward, which should read 1940, not 1949!

You mentioned that your mother was thinking of using the memoirs for a children's book - I was wondering if she was influence by the work of Yoshiko Uchida or the other way around. Writing children's books is not a common activity, especially when the subject of the books is on the Japanese American internment. Uchida who wrote children's books with such subject matter also went to Topaz. Did your mother know Uchida?
My mother was a creative introvert, who thought of new inventions (colored cigarettes and colored sheets before they became vogue, for instance), and she started writing her memoirs as a children's book in the early 50's. I remember, feeling embarrassed about this prospect, as a self-conscious, sensitive teen that she may include me in this book! Oh, no! I doubt if my mother knew Yoshiko Uchida at Topaz. Ms. Uchida was an educated writer and a warm, natural storyteller of fiction and nonfiction. My mom sent Ms. Uchida a copy of her manuscript sometime in the 1980's, and as I remember, Yoshiko wrote back a reply that my mom's writing needed much editing before it would be acceptable to a publisher.

On another note my adult 38 y/o daughter in Virginia is currently contracted with the Children's Book Press in San Francisco to write a children's (3rd grade level) fictionalized book about the art school at Topaz. In fact her draft is due this week, and I learned that Felicia Hoshino will be the illustrator. I have not read the draft but my father is fictionalized. My daughter, Amy Lee Tai, has heard and read about the camps, but it is a different realm to actually have experienced the life there.

Where can people go to see your mother's paintings? Are there any plans to have an exhibition in the Bay Area or anywhere else? How about your father's work - where can people find it and are there any plans to exhibit in the near future? How about a book on his work? Are there a lot of pieces of your parent's work that have not been exhibited?
An exhibition of many of her paintings took place at the de Saisset Gallery of Santa Clara University from Sept. 2004-March 2005, and I understand that a few thousand people came through the gallery. The show was entitled, Peaceful Painter, as was the book. There are a number of websites on the Internet, which show her paintings. One major site of her internment paintings is the Japanese American National Museum website.

My mother was unable to hold on to my father's paintings due to her limited space. However, she did have a retrospective exhibition of his internment paintings in 1963. She sold some and donated the remainder to the UCLA Research Project. I understand that these paintings are stored at UCLA and are inaccessible to the public. My father was a prolific oil painter with hundreds of paintings done before the internment, but these paintings are misplaced, lost or destroyed. Some have been found or located in homes or art sales. So it would be difficult for me to try to do a book on my father, though it would certainly be an interesting one. He had mastered technique and painted with a strong, bold style, as contrasted with my mother's. He liked to paint wild animals, birds, mystical landscapes, and portraits.

(Note - some of Hisako Hibi's work will be exhibited at the Ginza Bazaar in San Francisco this coming weekend. Check our schedule below for information on this event.)

This book had one of your father's poems, was he and/or your mother good at poetry too and is there any interest in publishing their poetry? Sounds like they both had an interesting philosophical perspective on life.
I have a lot of my father's writings in the Japanese narrative script, which I cannot decipher. I guess that they both wrote poetry, though their visual art took precedence in their lives. My father's philosophy comes from his Buddhist family background near Kyoto…

…Nothing is more inconceivably profound than being alive, having life and living in the present.

Would you mind if I use your father's poem and the last part of your mother's memoir to end this interview?
Okay.

It is not known whether this autumn will be
Rainy or windy,
But, as for today's task, take weeds from the rice field.
- Matsusaburo Hibi

Art consoles the spirit, and it continues on in timeless time.
- Hisako Hibi