The Long Serendipitous Path
In 1991 4 paintings once owned by Kenneth Callahan were donated to the Wing, two by Takuichi Fujii, one by Kenjiro Nomura and one by Genzo Tomita. All had been created in the 1930s by these Seattle based artists.
There they remained in storage until an opportunity in 2011 for an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to conserve and restore works of art was presented. One of the Fujii paintings had some paint loss and was submitted as a potential candidate.
The grant was awarded and the work “Rock Island Dam” was cleaned and restored by a local conservator.
Descendants of Mr. Fujii saw information about the restoration work and contacted the museum to inquire about further holding of Takuichi Fujii which they had including a diary he had kept during WWII.
They were put in contact with Barbara Johns who had been working on books and diaries of local Japanese American artists. Barbara developed a book and a traveling exhibit on the works of Takuichi Fujii beginning in 2015. In 2017 her book Hope of Another Spring was published and the traveling exhibit Witness to Wartime featuring the diary is on the road. Through the generosity of a member the diary became part of the permanent collection of the Wing in 2018.
From a donation, a restoration twenty years later and a connection to descendants, portions of the community return home. Hear more about Barbara Johns’s work at Tadaima! https://www.jampilgrimages.com/week-7