Esumi
Before WWII, Masaji Fujii, an American citizen, spent his formative years, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, in his family’s hometown in Esumi, Japan. My father, Masaji, and I visited the small fishing village and stayed in the house he and his family had built 65 years prior. One evening, we walked across the street to the ocean and he preceded to tell me about an incident that happened when he was around twelve years old, at that exact location.
This is the area, when I was a kid…
On summertime, this place was full with people who were coming swimming, fishing… and our house used to always be full in summertime because there was always somebody at our house. And, when I first, summer that, when I came back, when I came to Japan, I went into swimming but I didn’t know how to swim. All of a sudden there was a drop about 10 or 15 feet away, I thought that I could walk and I started walking and all of a sudden I dropped in and I start drowning. And one of my, a fellow that I had known later on, his name by Maeda Toshiaki… He was there and he threw me one of the chords that he had on him, and I remember grabbing the cord and he pulled me up to the shore.
Reiko Fujii • She/Her • USA
Reiko Fujii was born in 1950 in Riverside, California. Her art reflects a determination to preserve stories…..the stories of her ancestors and stories of her Japanese American experience. She earned a BA in Psychology from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Studio Arts from John F. Kennedy University.
