Robert Kobayashi served in the United States Army from 1944 to 1946 during WWII, winning four medal citations as a member of the 778th Tank Battalion. Despite this service, Kobayashi’s status as a Japanese American prevented him from travelling home to his native Hawaii on leave. Instead of risking internment by his own country, Kobayashi chose to make a short but fateful journey North, where he fell into the Art Institute of Chicago and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884. This chance encounter with pointillism would plant the seed for the artist’s future practice.