Frank Kadowaki

A fine arts painter, conservationist and restorer specializing in Asian antiques, Frank Jin Kadowaki (1901-93) was born in the seaside town of Shimane, Japan, on March 2, 1901. When he was eight years old, his mother left him with relatives and immigrated to the United States, joining his father who was already in California. Kadowaki finally made the voyage to the United States to join his parents in Santa Ana, California, when he was eighteen years old. He married Hanako (Ida) in Santa Ana, California on November 5, 1927 and the couple had three children. Although he studied at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, he turned to farming to support his family, leasing land from the Irvine Ranch Company.

When World War II began, he and his family were sent from Santa Ana to the concentration camp in Poston , Arizona. He continued to paint and teach oil and watercolor workshops to other inmates while incarcerated in Poston, although art supplies were scarce and worked on the Poston Chronicle newspaper. Kadowaki also worked on a Japanese garden for the camp administration, which allowed the gardeners the freedom to use a truck to leave camp and pick up rocks for the garden composition. After three years at Poston, the Kadowaki family moved to New York to work for a family in Port Jervis. Kadowaki was later hired at the Metropolitan Museum of art to work in Asian art restoration.

After returning to California, Kadowaki began restoring Asian antiques, specializing in tapestries. He and his wife ran the Asian art and antiques store for the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena featuring screens, scrolls, carved teak furniture, lacquer, porcelain and jade, until his retirement. Paintings and excerpts from an interview about Kadowaki's WWII incarceration experience were featured in the 1987 book of artwork produced in camp, titled Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps. He died in Los Angeles on January 22, 1993 at age 92.