The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) mourns the recent passing of Nisei artist Hisako Terasaki.
Born to Shuichi and Chizu Sumioka, she and her sister, Tokiko, grew up in Boyle Heights, where her family ran a flower shop. The Sumiokas were incarcerated at the Poston concentration camp in Arizona. During the postwar years, they lived and worked apart from each other to help their family become financially stable again.
During that difficult time, Hisako attended high school and worked as a live-in housekeeper. When she returned to Los Angeles, she studied art and earned her BA in education at Los Angeles City College in 1954. That same year, she married Paul I. Terasaki, a pioneer in human organ transplant technology.
While raising a family, she pursued printmaking and exhibited her artwork in the Los Angeles area, including her exhibition in honor of Nisei Week, “Hisako Terasaki: A Self-Portrait, that ran from Aug. 7– Sept. 5, 1999, in JANM’s Terasaki Orientation Theater.
Her work captured her worldwide travels and the raising of her four children. Later in life, she and her husband became cherished philanthropic supporters of the Japanese American and Los Angeles communities.
“It’s with a heavy heart that we grieve the loss of a phenomenal woman who touched so many people with her compassion, creativity, and generosity,” said Ann Burroughs, JANM president and CEO. “Among the many gifts that the Terasaki family bestowed on the museum was helping to restore the Historic Building, where JANM first opened to the public. Throughout the years, their family’s generosity has supported a wide range of initiatives that includes the annual Benefit and the Pavilion’s orientation theater and garden café, both of which bear their names.
“The museum and the entire Japanese American community will always appreciate and cherish Mrs. Terasaki’s artistic talents, her kindness and quiet dignity that she shared with so many of us and that propelled our mission and the Japanese American community forward.”