Chiura Obata was a Japanese artist teaching at the University of California, Berkeley and owned his own art supply store in 1942. He, his wife and his two children were forced to leave their home and most of their belongings and move to the temporary internment camp in San Bruno, California. From there they went to the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah. The weather there was extremely harsh and life was hard for all those in the camp. Obata started an art school at the camp later in 1942.
In 1943 many people were allowed to leave the camps but they couldn’t go back to the West Coast. Obata and his family went to St. Louis and found work there for the rest of the war.
When talking about the war he once said, “Everyone suffered a loss. It goes without saying, this kind of artificial relocation can have no benefit to people or society or politics … In short, the biggest difficulty was not being able to work fully toward our hopes and expectations.”
He and his family did eventually return to Berkeley. Unlike many other Japanese Americans who returned to the west Obata had his old job waiting for him, but money was still tight.
In 1954 the Obatas became naturalized citizens of the U.S.
Story from We Are California: Stories of Immigraiton and Change
Migrations
Animal 
Human 
Dance/Art