Jack Chikamichi Yamasaki

Born in present Makurazaki City, Kagoshima Prefecture. In 1922, Yamasaki emigrated to the United States at the age of 18, and joined his father who was working as a farmer in the Imperial Valley, California. Around 1928, he began attending the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, where he interacted with Hideo Noda and Takeo Terada. In the summer of 1931, he shared a house in Woodstock, New York, with Noda and Sakari Suzuki. In New York, he attended the Art Students League. In 1936, he joined the American Artists’ Congress, a left-wing group formed against war and fascism. He also exhibited at the exhibitions of Japanese artists in New York organized by the Japanese Times newspaper in 1935 and 1936 at the ACA gallery. From 1935, he also engaged in the mural paintings at the Harlem Courthouse, which was undertaken by Eitaro Ishigaki, as part of the Work Progress Administration (WPA) project. He returned to the West Coast in the late 1930 and settled in Los Angeles. During the war, he was initially interned at the Santa Anita Assembly Center, then later at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming. After the war, he worked exclusively for the U.S. Army and traveled to India, China, and Japan, where he also left sketches.