Untitled (News of Pearl Harbor)

Maker Henry Sugimoto (American, 1900 - 1990)

Date1932-1952

Mediumoil, canvas

DimensionsH: 53.5 in, W: 40 in

ClassificationsFine Arts

Credit LineGift of Madeleine Sugimoto and Naomi Tagawa, Japanese American National Museum

Object number92.97.104

DescriptionStretched and framed in 2019 for an outgoing loan. (originally unstretched and unframed.);A Japanese family of three in Hanford, California listen to the radio about the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. A bearded man sits with his back to the viewer at a checked cloth covered table, right hand tuning a radio. To the right, a woman in a white collared blue dress sits next to him, leaning against her right arm with a worried expression. Above her on the grey wall is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln with a small American flag sticking out of the yellow frame. A pennant, "Hanford HI" hangs above it. A little boy in a blue and white striped shirt and blue overalls stands in the left background, pointing out of the window at a bird flying away into a winter landscape. The upper half of the painting is dominated by a cloudlike scence, overlapping the domestic scene, of two fighter planes coming out of the upper right corner toward a sinking, smoking battleship, USS Arizona, exploding in red and yellow. A tiny plane is visible in the upper left corner.