RARE Antique Vintage Asian Japanese Abstract Oil Painting Yoshio Nakamura

Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! Yoshio C Nakamura (mid 20th C) was active/lived in Japan. Companies'M' and'L', 442nd Regimental Combat Team Enlisted Reserve.

Camp Blanding, FL; MD; NY; USA Italy France. Provide mortar support for ground troops. Major battles (if served in a war zone). European (Southern france & Northern Italy); North Apennines; Po Valley. Awards, medals, citations (individual or unit).

European-African-Middle Eastern Ribbon with 3 Battle Stars Bronze Star Combat Infantryman's Badge Presidential Unit Citation with 1 Gold Leaf Cluster. A combat soldier's life was stressful. We had the bare necessities for survival.

My company & regiment were great in looking after each other. We ate'C' rations & when in interior areas, we had cooked meals. I still have a problem with Spam. Most vivid memory of military experience. My buddy, Tack Nakamura, thought he was going to lean against a cliff while climbing up an Italian mountain in the dark.

But he fell to the next terrace, anchored by the mortar base plate. We finally got him up and quietly - this was after his whispered cries for help.

Missed most whilst in the military. Most important thing, personally, to come from military experience? I learned that we can all do many things which we didn't know we could do (such as, physical endurance & spiritual strength). There was always a strong sense that we Americans of Japanese ancestry showed our loyalty to the U.

As a result of the G. Bill, I completed my bachelor's and master's degree and have enjoyed a very satisfying career as educator, administrator and artist. Yoshio Nakamura was interned, fought in WWII.

22 at a private residence in Beverly Hills. The French government awards the honor to American veterans of World Wars I and II, in tribute of the French people's gratitude for those who risked and gave their lives defending liberty, according the Consulate General's website. "It was a rather traumatic experience, " Nakamura, 91, said.

I was a good student and president of a service club just living my life. Nakamura and his family were taken from their home in Rosemead to the Tulare Assembly Center near Fresno. There he lived there with his father, an older brother, and younger brother and sister in barracks at the center, the site of former race track. "There was barbed wire, search lights and armed guards, " Nakamura said.

Nakamura and his wife of 66 years, Grace, invited the Rio Hondo College officials because of his close ties with the campus on the hill. After starting his teaching career at Whittier High School in 1952, Nakamura he began a nearly 30-year career at Rio Hondo College in 1963. He was one of the school's first three instructors. "I thought it was appropriate to have the college represented because they have been such a big part of my life, " he said. Non-Stop Art' an All-in-the-Family Affair for the Versatile Nakamuras.

This year is no different, as six family members are showing their works at the three-day exhibition, which began Friday. "It's a special show because it is where some of us got our start, " said Yoshio, who is dean of community services at Rio Hondo Community College. It was one of the first shows my children entered. As a family, the Nakamuras could form their own culture club.

Yoshio and Grace Nakamura's two sons--Joel, 25, a commercial illustrator, and Daniel, 27, a specialist in the traditional paper craft of origami--have emerged as the family's best-known artists. The family's East Whittier home is a cross between a museum and a studio, with family artifacts filling nearly every wall. Through the years, the house has been an incubator of ideas and expression for the couple's three children, including their daughter, Linda Nakamura Oberholtzer, who was a news photographer and writer before becoming an attorney. "Experimentation was always rewarded, " recalled Daniel, a high school math teacher in Los Angeles.

Every time there was an art opening. Every time a new gallery opened we went. There was a reason for the almost daily dose of art. "To be a good artist, one must be a careful observer of life, " said Grace, whose brother, Larry Shinoda, is an automotive designer and was largely responsible for the shape and styling of the classic 1963 Corvette Stingray.

My family was always taught to study life--the texture of the rocks, the new blades of grass, the clouds and the shape of the hills. I tried to teach my own children the value of life through art. I don't think we've pushed them, but we have exposed them to art. Art has long been a focal point in the lives of the elder Nakamuras, who are in their late 50s.

Yoshio, who has several paintings and etchings in the Guggenheim Collection in New York and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. Developed his interest while in a Los Angeles hospital. There he was recovering from a combat wound suffered in Europe during World War II while a member of the Army's famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team made up of Japanese-Americans. A water colorist taught the bedridden veterans how to paint to pass the time and assuage the war's pain. He went on to USC and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in art before landing his first art teaching job at Whittier High School in the early 1950s.

Grace, who coordinates gifted-student programs for the El Rancho Unified School District, also has a degree in art. Grace took her most valued possession--my watercolor box. The Nakamura children point to Yoshio's six-month sabbatical in 1970 from Rio Hondo College as a turning point in their art education.

But if I hadn't been kicked out of a high school algebra class, it might not have happened. Instead of the math class at Whittier's California High School, Joel was assigned to an art class.

"It was then, " Joel said, laughing, that I got hooked for good. This weekend, Yoshio and Grace, both primarily painters and graphic artists, have entered a series of photographs in the Hillcrest festival.

Yet both are showing at the Hillcrest, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Today's hours are from 11:30 a. "The festival is a fixture in our community, " said Daniel, one of only a scattering of origami artists displaying work in Southern California.

It's the most important and visible show for Whittier artists. It's to Whittier what Laguna Beach's annual Pageant of the Masters is to Laguna Beach. Joel, who works with his wife, also a commercial artist, out of their South Pasadena home, added.

The family was among the 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated following the war hysteria and racism that erupted in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. As children, Grace and her late brother, Larry Shinoda, an automotive designer who was credited with the 1968 Corvette Stingray, loved to draw on cutout sides of paper sacks that their mother supplied for them.

"My mother was a very resourceful person, " Grace said. In those days, they used to have flyers they used to pass around in people's mailboxes. She'd save the side that was good, the blank side, and there was a little box of pencil stubs. That was always there for us.

It was right near the radio. After the war, with the help of the Quakers' organization, American Friends Service, Grace was able to get a scholarship to attend the University of Redlands to study sociology and education. She went on to teach in the Pasadena School District and receive two master's degrees. While in her early 20s, Grace would meet Yoshio "Yosh" Nakamura, now 88, who also shared her love of fine arts.

We were at the Union Church of Los Angeles. The young people decided they'd like to go to the beach after the service. So, they all got in the cars. This one woman didn't have a ride, and I happened to have -- as a veteran I was able to go to their war surplus stores and they had a Ford that had a Mercury engine that was for sale, said Yosh. I took her to the beach.

After the war, Yosh, who was first drawn to watercolors, was able to briefly hone his art skills in Florence, Italy. He went on to receive his bachelor's and master's degree in fine arts from the University of Southern California. Later, Yosh was one of the first faculty members to ink a contract with Rio Hondo Community College in Whittier, Calif. And then become the first chair of the fine arts department. The husband and wife will celebrate 64 years of marriage this year.

I get the PR whether I want it or not. This is living testament that I'm talking to you.

Three of Joel's murals that depict the museum's collections were unveiled on Feb. "We really wanted to find just the right artist who could interpret the museum's fabulous collections in a way that would connect to kids, " said Lisa McGuire, the museum's exhibits graphic designer. Exhibits project manager Bryce Snellgrove and I had both worked with Santa Fe artist Joel Nakamura before, so we thought he'd be a perfect match for this vision.

As luck would have it, Joel was also excited to work with the museum again. It was apparent to Bryce and to me that with Joel's youthful enthusiasm and fascination with the collections, something wonderful was in store. And we were not disappointed. An award-winning illustrator, fine artist and third-degree Aikido black belt, Joel lives in Santa Fe, N.

The mother of three, however, is equally proud of all her children's careers and creative endeavors. Carrying on the resourceful art tradition that began with her mother, Grace would provide big sheets of X-ray paper that she acquired from her radiologist uncle for her children to do art projects on when they were growing up. The eldest Nakamura child, Linda, is now an immigration attorney who also does photography. The middle sibling, Daniel, is a teacher who is also a skilled origami artist. Together, the Nakamura family has had seven art shows.

They will showcase their works as a family at the 54th Hillcrest Festival of Fine Arts in La Habra Heights, Calif. From her family home where the Nakamura art is on permanent display, Grace laughs saying, "I'm not the typical Japanese mom, " but she adds, looking at her husband. I got a lot of shows for you.