Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson's "Shell Song" Bridges Generations Through Art and History

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but Shell Song, written and illustrated by Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson, proves them wrong. Shell Song’s jacket is breathtaking; a visual promise of beauty and depth. The illustrated cover is split: one side depicts a young girl standing on a sunset-lit beach, clutching a seashell as prismatic hues dance around her; the other half is washed in sepia, like a faded photograph, showing her grandfather kneeling on the sand, shell in hand, with military tents in the distance,a haunting glimpse of the Hawaiian incarceration camp where he was held during WWII.

Fujimoto-Johnson's illustrations in Shell Song speak directly to the heart. The thoughtful incorporation of her family's actual heirlooms—her grandfather's collected shells, soil from the incarceration camps, and patterns from her grandmother's wedding kimono—infuses the artwork with emotional resonance. There's a delicate balance of joy and melancholy in her illustrations that mirrors the complexity of inherited memory, creating images that don't merely accompany the text but carry their own emotional weight. The result is artwork that invites readers of all ages to linger in these visual spaces where family history and storytelling intertwine.

I had the pleasure of meeting Fujimoto-Johnson during JANM's Oshogatsu event earlier this year, where she graciously signed copies of her first book The Mochi Makers for our store. Ahead of Shell Song's release date, I reached out in an email with questions about her creative process, from her approach to balancing child-friendly illustrations with historical authenticity, to the emotional impact of community responses, and the research challenges surrounding Hawaiʻi's often-overlooked incarceration camps. I also asked about her artistic influences, the significance of including family pets in her illustrations, and, for a lighter note, her favorite mochi flavor. Her answers were so deeply personal and poignant that they deserve to be read in her own words—shared here in full.

1. As both author and illustrator of Shell Song, how did you balance creating artwork that appeals to children while authentically portraying the hardships your grandfather experienced during incarceration?

When I was around 10 years old, my father gave me the shells that my grandfather had collected at Sand Island Internment Camp and Honouliuli Internment Camp in Hawai’i during World War II. Even as a young child, I understood that these shells were a precious inheritance that carried a story. 

To create this book, I tried to step inside the framework of the macro historical context to inhabit the very real emotions of my grandparents’ microhistory. I wanted the artwork to feel soft enough that readers would be willing to immerse themselves in the story alongside the characters. I wanted the words to be both honest enough and gentle enough that they would hopefully make their way into readers’ hearts. Sometimes gentleness can achieve what blunt force cannot. 

I think that even young children can understand the emotions and core themes in this story. For children whose family histories echo mine and also children who have no familial connection to the incarceration camps of World War II, these stories are important, because it provides a space in which empathy can grow. This is possibly even more important than knowing the historical facts about the Japanese American incarceration camps. 

My hope is that Shell Song is a tender telling of a harrowing story that will invite readers of all ages to circle back to it again and again to find new threads of understanding over time and perhaps find their own connections to the collective narrative. My family’s story is just one small thread in the complex story of America after all, and the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans is hardly a monolithic narrative. It is actually 125,000+ individual stories of the incarcerated multiplied by the inheritance of these stories in the lives of their descendants. 

2. What responses from the Japanese American community, especially from descendants of those incarcerated during WWII, have meant the most to you about Shell Song?

Since Shell Song hasn’t officially come out yet, I’ve only heard from readers of early review copies and my family. This is the first children’s picture book to address the incarceration camps in Hawai’i. Although more people are aware of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans on the West Coast, fewer people know that Hawai’i too has its history of incarceration camps. Whereas the injustice on the West Coast lay in the indiscriminate incarceration of entire communities, including children, babies, and elderly, Hawai’i’s particular injustice in the incarceration of Japanese Americans was family separation. Those who were arrested in Hawai’i were torn from their families. 

Soon after my grandfather’s arrest, my grandmother gave birth to their third son (my father). In her autobiography, my grandmother wrote about the humiliation of being transported to the hospital in a prisoner van to give birth alone. She wrote about taking their three young children to visit my grandfather at Honouliuli Internment Camp. My father met his father for the first time when he was four and a half months old behind barbed wire. 

I hope that Shell Song will shine a light on the lesser known stories of the incarceration camps in Hawai’i. I hope that it leads to understanding and healing, and I hope that I’ve honored my grandfather’s story in this book. 

3. Shell Song provides an account on Japanese American incarceration in Hawai'i, an often overlooked chapter compared to mainland camps. What challenges did you face in researching these less-documented camps?

In college, I read all the research I could find on the Japanese American incarceration camps, and I could only find limited references to the incarceration camps in Hawai’i where my grandfather was imprisoned. My grandmother had entrusted me with her handwritten Japanese autobiography and tanka poetry, and for my multidisciplinary college thesis, I translated my grandmother’s body of work and created three hand-bound books showcasing her work. (These books, my grandfather’s shells, and a more detailed account of my family’s story will be on display at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose in an exhibit titled “KA-HŌ 家宝 heirloom: the family treasures that connect us.”)

In creating Shell Song, I had the chance to revisit many books on the Japanese American incarceration that I had read years ago in college, and I discovered that much more has been published since my initial deep dive into this topic. I’m so grateful to be able to add Shell Song to the conversation. 

When I was working on this book, I wondered if my grandfather could hear the ocean from behind barbed wire at Sand Island Internment Camp. I corresponded with archaeologists and historians about this question, and although no one could give me a definitive answer, we don’t think the ocean could have been easily seen or heard from the incarceration camp in the center of this small island. Similarly, Honouliuli Internment Camp was located in an inland valley on Oahu. Some lines in Shell Song grew out of the idea of my grandfather collecting shells despite being removed from the presence of the ocean. As the generation that lived this experience leaves us, it is all the more important that we preserve the threads that remain so that a story can arise from these threads of memory. Since I never had the chance to hear my grandfather’s story directly from him, I tried to thoughtfully and respectfully weave together the known pieces of his story with threads of empathy. 

4. There’s a very lyrical quality to your illustrations and a nostalgic quality to the elements you collaged into the images. What influenced your artistic style?

I knew that my grandfather’s shells would guide the creation of this story. These shells and other family artifacts became part of the artwork themselves. Digitally collaged into the artwork for Shell Song are my family photos, my grandfather’s actual shells, and soil from Sand Island and Honouliuli, the two incarceration camps where my grandfather collected these shells. 

I’m grateful to the Japanese American National Museum and Duncan Williams, curator of the Ireichō, for allowing my cousin to photograph the soil samples for this book. I also incorporated patterns from my grandmother’s wedding kimono into the artwork as the wallpaper of the family home and my grandmother’s clothing. Additionally, I used textures from fabrics in my father’s wardrobe for my grandfather’s clothing, weaving their stories together in this way. 

As the inheritor of my family stories, I believe that it is my responsibility to also make space for the next generation to claim and share these stories too, so my kids each contributed a small piece for the artwork: the stick figure family portrait on the wall in the opening spread and the original composed music that is layered into the artwork on the back cover. 

5. In your first book The Mochi Makers there’s an illustration of an adorable pet cat and in Shell Song an equally adorable pet dog. The pictures show clearly that they are beloved family pets. Were you trying to give equal representation to both dogs and cats or are they representative of actual pets from your memories?

I’ve had beloved cats and dogs throughout my life, but the family pets in my books belong to the characters in my stories. In The Mochi Makers, this sometimes mischievous cat has its own unspoken storyline. In the quiet storyline of mochi-making, this cat is sometimes the most active participant, and I’m quite fond of this cat. 

As for the dog in Shell Song, there may not have been a family dog in real life in my grandparents’ home, especially in the early years, but I felt that this story needed this dog’s gentle presence. Specifically, when I was working on the artwork for the scene where the family is gathered around the table listening to the radio, this dog wanted to walk into the scene and place its head next to my grandfather. I cannot imagine this story without this dog now, because this beloved family pet brought an element of universality, comfort, and humanity to the story.

6. Do you have a favorite mochi flavor?

I think the “plain, everyday mochi” that Ojii-chan liked best in The Mochi Makers is the flavor that reminds me most of family and home. When I started working on The Mochi Makers, I was actually recovering from cancer. I wrote the first drafts during a time when I was suffering major complications from treatment that resulted in me being unable to eat by mouth for several months. I was hooked up to a pump that dripped liquid nutrition into a line in my arm. At the time, I was thinking a lot about food and family and love and how these intersect, and this story grew out of that space and pays homage to my household of three generations and also my family history of immigration. 

 

Grandfather's shell collection will be on exhibit at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose from April 24 to October 26, 2025. For more information visit the author's website at www.sharonfj.com/