Portland exhibit honors Bob Shimabukuro, activist for Northwest’s Japanese American redress movement

Nonprofit consultant Alice Ito lost her husband, Bob Shimabukuro, to natural causes almost three years ago. Despite his absence in their Seattle home, she still feels his love and care embodied in the cherry wood rocking chair he crafted for her before their marriage in 1988.

“He said to me that in some communities and cultures for an engagement, a man would build a chair for his fiancée,” Ito said. “I am very short and no chairs fit me … so I asked him to make me a chair.

“It has a very soothing motion,” she continued. “Even if you don’t sit in it, it’s really nice to look at — and it brings together a lot of different aspects of his personality, his own gifts.”

Now the chair, along with some of his other woodwork and his life story, are being featured in a special exhibit, called “Craft, Community and Care: The Art and Legacy of Bob Shimabukuro,” at the Japanese American Museum of Oregon in Portland’s Old Town. The exhibit opens on Feb. 17, coinciding with the state’s Day of Remembrance for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Organizer of Oregon’s first Day of Remembrance event

Shimabukuro was born on Maui island, Hawaii, in 1945. His family was originally from Okinawa, which is Japan’s southernmost archipelago and has a culture distinct from the mainland’s. The exhibit reveals his upbringing as the son of a labor union activist who instilled in him Marxist philosophy and awareness of social injustices.

Shimabukuro moved to Portland in 1963 to study philosophy at Reed College, where he delved into carpentry while working on the school’s theater sets. After graduation, he honed his skills as an apprentice at a North Portland furniture shop. Then he opened his own shop, Shimabukuro Distinct Furniture. In 1979, he designed and built the rustic decor for Tanuki, a now-defunct restaurant in Southeast Portland. He later became a chef and co-owner of the restaurant.

But Shimabukuro is best known for his activism in the Pacific Northwest’s Japanese American redress movement, advocating for restitution of civil rights, an apology and monetary compensation for the wartime forced removal and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. He assisted survivors in preparing testimonies for hearings of the federal Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, established in 1980.

On Feb. 17, 1979, Shimabukuro organized Oregon’s first Day of Remembrance event, held at North Portland’s Pacific International Livestock Exposition Pavilion, now the Portland Expo Center, the site where nearly 3,700 Japanese Americans were detained before being sent to concentration camps during World War II.

Chisao Hata, now managing JAMO’s Living Arts program, was among the 2,000-plus participants of the 1979 event and a close friend of Shimabukuro. After Shimabukuro died on March 29, 2021, Hata proposed creating an exhibit in his honor, highlighting his commitment to activism and community building.

Hata remembers Shimabukuro as a “Renaissance person,” showing leadership with a strong commitment to his beliefs, yet open to listening to others’ perspectives and incorporating them into a broader narrative for activism.

“Taking the time to listen to people’s stories, connecting your history and your story to those other histories and stories,” she said, “so that’s a high level of empathy.”

Part of the ‘Lasting Legacy’

The exhibit on Shimabukuro’s legacy is part of JAMO’s “Lasting Legacy” series, previously featuring woodworker George Nakashima and painter George Tsutakawa. An exhibit on Portland businessman Bill Naito is scheduled to launch in May.

Mira Shimabukuro, Bob’s daughter, initially hesitated to place her father alongside internationally renowned figures like Nakashima and Tsutakawa. But she was convinced by Hata’s proposal to expand the meaning of legacy which, in Hata words, is “not just about people that we think are famous.”

Over the years, Mira, a poet teaching writing at the University of Washington, Bothell, collaborated with her family and the museum to summarize her father’s work and curate his woodwork artifacts.

She believes the exhibit’s title, “Craft, Community, and Care,” aptly encapsulates her father’s multifaceted legacy: “I do think we have created a really well-rounded representation of the kind of person my father was and the kind of impact that he had.”

Challenging stereotypes and hate

After leaving Portland in the early 1980s, Bob Shimabukuro continued his activism as a journalist on the West Coast, serving as an editor for Pacific Citizen in Los Angeles and later writing for the International Examiner in Seattle’s Chinatown International District.

In 1992, he assisted in the design and construction of the replicated barrack from Idaho’s Minidoka concentration camp for “Executive Order 9066: 50 Years Before and 50 Years After,” a six-month exhibition spotlighting survivors from Seattle, hosted at Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum.

Ron Chew hired Shimabukuro in his roles as the editor of International Examiner and the executive director of Wing Luke Museum. He remembers Shimabukuro as a “very soft-spoken individual” with deep insights into various social issues such as AIDS, feminism and anti-Asian racism.

“He liked to challenge stereotypes, the notion of Asian-American men as being non-romantic, ideas about Asian Americans as being one way or another — and pointing out that we’re very diverse,” Chew said.

Alice Ito remembers her husband Shimabukuro’s commitment to his beliefs, recalling how he defied gender norms at the time by taking care of their children and household chores while she worked long hours outside their home.

She also notes that after his brother Sam, an openly gay man, died of AIDS in 1988, Shimabukuro co-founded the Asian Pacific AIDS Council to educate Asian American communities in Seattle about the disease during a time of rampant homophobia and misinformation.

Ito says despite Shimabukuro being an older, straight, cisgender man, he successfully forged connections with young LGBTQ+ individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds, fostering a sense of community among them.

“Part of that was his deep respect for all people and conviction that everyone is deserving of respect and support,” she said.

Ito hopes that visitors to the JAMO exhibit, running through April 14, will find inspiration in Shimabukuro’s relentless commitment to effecting positive change in the world.