Taro Yajima ( birth name: Jun Iwamatsu) was born on September 21, 1908, in a seaside town in Kagoshima Prefecture, the son of a doctor and an art collector. After three years of study at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, he was expelled from the school for his rebellious attitude and his absence from military training. For their opposition to the militarist government, Iwamatsu and his wife, Mitsu Yashima (birth name: Tomoe Sasago), were imprisoned and brutalized; in 1939, they left Japan for the U.S. so that Iwamatsu could avoid conscription into the Japanese army and Tomoe and Iwamatsu could study art. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Iwamatsu enlisted in the US Army and worked as an artist for the US Office of War Information (OWI) and later for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). At this time, they used the pen name Taro and Mitsu Yajima for the first time, fearing that his family in Japan would be affected if the Japanese government became aware of his work. After the war, Taro and Mitsu were granted permanent residency by an act of the U.S. Congress.