Bob Matsumoto displays the logo he designed that was used in his JA cap and T-shirt. Behind him is a poster created for Day of Remembrance incorporating his red, white and blue “Remembrance” barbed-wire motif overlaid on a group photo of Manzanar’s Block 30 that includes himself as a boy. (Photo: George Toshio Johnston)
The renowned creative director, teacher and ad man
promotes a cap and T-shirt combo in advance of his next project, a documentary about his mentor.
By George Toshio Johnston, P.C. Senior Editor
More than nearly anyone, Bob Matsumoto is aware that the time he has left to complete his next project is limited.
A sign of that shortened runway: In September 2025, his alma mater, Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design, honored Matsumoto with its 2023 Outstanding Service Award at its 2025 alumni reunion, yet another accolade to add to his trophy room. It’s the kind of award, however, that doesn’t go to spring chickens.
That may be why he needs to put the word out about his second-to-last project, one with a Japanese American theme. It’s a project that has echoes of “Remembrance,” one of his earlier art projects that combined the barbed wire associated with World War II-era War Relocation Authority camps for Japanese Americans like Manzanar, where his family and he were incarcerated when he was boy, with the patriotic red, white and blue colors of the American flag.
“I just want to let you know this is it for me,” Matsumoto said in reference to his second-to-last project and the final one he plans to do with a Japanese American angle.
Pictured is a screengrab from the janmstore.com website of Bob Matsumoto’s embroidered JA T-shirt and cap, both available for sale.
But before Matsumoto devotes his complete focus on a film project, he also wants to make sure his penultimate project gets the attention it deserves. That project: the JA (or Japanese American) ball cap and T-shirt.
So, as he approaches 90, the renowned, much-honored creative director, ad man, filmmaker and teacher knows that if he wants to complete the documentary about the man whose unexpected, unasked for help decades ago would point Matsumoto’s career trajectory into the thermosphere, he will need to focus his limited time and energy toward that task— but not before making sure as many people as possible know about that cap and shirt, which can be found for sale at the gift shops of the California Museum in Sacramento, Calif., and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.
Pacific Citizen volunteer Garrett Ikegami models the JA cap and T-shirt designed by Bob Matsumoto.
Both articles of clothing incorporate a similar patriotic theme found in “Remembrance,” in which he used an all-American red, white and blue color scheme, applied to barbed wire superimposed on a black background, inspired by the barbed wire that surrounded Manzanar, where he lived as a 4-year-old boy.
The black ball cap and black T-shirt simply have the sans serif embroidered letters “JA.” But it’s the treatment of those letters — an all-white “J” embedded with a red circle like what is on the hinomaru flag of his ancestors and a tricolored, red, white and blue “A” of his home nation — that make a unique, Japanese American statement. (That the red dot in the A is, coincidentally, also part of ArtCenter’s logo is an inside nod to another aspect unique to Matsumoto.)
That cap and shirt combo may not be for everyone — but for its intended audience, those two stylized letters on the cap and shirt send a particular message of acknowledgement of a unique American identity. Not quite like a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish!” T-shirt — but sort of.
As for Matsumoto’s final project, the documentary holds particular significance for him, just as the cap and T-shirt do. Early in his adulthood, after a stint in the Navy, he found a job where he could use his artistic gifts — at a Sacramento, Calif., TV station.
In his oft-told tale, Matsumoto credits KCRA’s co-owner, Bob Kelly, for serendipitously offering, more than six decades ago, to cover the cost of an education at Pasadena’s ArtCenter — as long as he promised to repay to the last penny the cost of tuition (see the Aug. 6, 2021, Pacific Citizen, tinyurl.com/msffnxrc).
It was a godfather-like offer he couldn’t refuse — minus, of course, the horse head in the bed. That, plus Kelly’s demand that Matsumoto also promise to always help others whenever possible, would be one of the then-young artist’s defining life moments and the prelude to a fulfilling career.
Now, in 2026, Matsumoto’s wants to shift his creative powers and focus to his Bob Kelly documentary. The obstacles, however, are many. Kelly’s widow is in Sacramento, and that’s where the necessary photos that need to be scanned for the project are. Matsumoto, however, is in Burbank, Calif. He’s also elderly. And, he no longer can drive.
But Matsumoto is still sharp mentally and resourceful. He can work the phone. He can send and receive emails. He can interact with his many friends who want to help him. He can hire the required talent to remotely record the audio and video.
It’s doable, in other words. For Matsumoto, just like getting into ArtCenter turned out to be a goal that wasn’t as unrealistic as it might have seemed to be, so is this project.
As he noted in the video used in the ArtCenter Awards 2025, “You’ve often heard the saying, ‘The luck of the Irish.’ I’ve had the luck of being Japanese American.”
To view the video featuring Bob Matsumoto’s reflections upon receiving the 2023 Outstanding Service Award shown at ArtCenter’s 2025 alumni reunion, visit tinyurl.com/25jy2vf4. The JA cap and T-shirt sell for $40 and $34, respectively, not including shipping and other costs, and may be purchased online from the JANM Store at tinyurl.com/4t9ah6ev and tinyurl.com/mvfktyfe.
