Masamori Hashimoto

Masamori Hashimoto was an artist born in Okayama, Japan, on January 6, 1898. He began his formal art training in Japan before immigrating to the United States in 1919 to join his father and brother, who were working in Wyoming. When they returned to Japan in 1922, Hashimoto elected to stay in the U.S. and moved to Washington, where he got married and found work in a lumber mill in Tacoma. During World War II, he was incarcerated in camps in Pinedale , California; Tule Lake , California; and Minidoka , Idaho, where he resumed his painting (mostly in watercolors) and created his only body of work. After the war, he returned to Tacoma where he worked as a gardener. He died in February 1980, in Tacoma, Washington, at age 82.