Lawrence Kiyoshi Shinoda: From Manzanar to Designing the Corvette

Manzanar National Historic Site publishes short "ID booklets" on people incarcerated there. Larry Shinoda's was written by his sister, Grace Shinoda Nakamura; it is retold here in hubnx's own words.

Family No. 20983 · Manzanar, California · Address 29-7-4

Before the war

Larry Shinoda's father, Kiyoshi Shinoda, came to the United States from Japan at 12; his mother, Hide Watanabe, came as a one-year-old. His father died when Larry was three and Grace six.

The family heard about Pearl Harbor on the car radio driving home from church on December 7, 1941. Executive Order 9066 then forced everyone of Japanese ancestry, U.S. citizens included, off the West Coast. Grace was 15 and Larry 12. They had a week to prepare and could take only what they could carry. Each packed a duffel bag with essentials; Larry added a picture of the family dog, Spotty, the small toolbox he had been given for Christmas, and his notebooks and pencils — he loved drawing cars and hot rods.

Manzanar

Early on May 16, 1942, a neighbour drove them to Los Angeles Union Station. The train felt eerie: every window shade was down, armed soldiers stood all around, and no food or drink was given. They reached Manzanar at dusk and were handed muslin bags to stuff with straw for mattresses — Larry told his sister he felt like the baby Jesus asleep on the hay. Their room held nothing but army beds for Grandma Watanabe, Uncle Tom Watanabe (a doctor, who became the camp doctor), two aunts and the two children, and the cold wind blew dust in through every crack.

Larry built two reclining chairs with armrests for his mother and grandmother from recycled wooden crates that had held toilets. They caused a stir in camp, and people came to look at them and try them out.

He loved fishing enough to risk the military police's guns, crawling under the barbed wire to reach the streams, where he dammed the water with rocks and caught trout by hand.

Grace had a far closer call. In December 1942 she ran to see a large protest, sparked by government employees stealing sugar and food meant for the incarcerated people. The military police fired into the unarmed crowd and killed Jimmy Ito, her classmate, standing only a few feet from her.

After the camp

In spring 1944 Larry, Grace and their mother left for a farm near Grand Junction, Colorado, to join family, and went to the local school. They skated on the farm's frozen pond with borrowed skates — until a bull charged and they escaped into the corn crib.

The family went back to California in 1945. Larry graduated from Eagle Rock High School, studied at Pasadena City College and the Art Center College of Design, served in the Air National Guard during the Korean War, and returned to Art Center to study transportation design. Ford Motor Company hired him as a car designer and stylist in Detroit.

Over his career he designed vehicles from two-wheelers to 18-wheelers, for every major transportation company in the United States and around the world. He is best known for his Corvette designs, the Boss Mustang and winning Indy 500 cars. He drew the original designs for the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where Corvettes are made; its showroom displays his classic Corvettes beneath a life-size statue of him, and his paintings and drawings hang throughout the museum.

Larry Shinoda died in November 1997. In September 1998 he was inducted, posthumously, into the museum's first Hall of Fame.

The booklet ends with a poem by George Nishimura, 16, written at Manzanar in 1943: the wind and dust are hard to bear and lower his spirits, but he will get through them, as others must too, hoping for the best.

Sources

• National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, "Lawrence Kiyoshi Shinoda," an ID booklet written by Grace Shinoda Nakamura. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/lawrence-kiyoshi-shinoda.htm
• More: the ten War Relocation Authority centers; Manzanar ID booklets.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.