Barbara ‘Miiko’ Nishimura- Gravlin was born in Tashme, the largest of Japanese Canadian internment camps in B.C. At an early age, she became an abstract painter under mentors, Richard Gorman and Mashel Teitelbaum and Kazuo Nakamura. In 1965, she was the recipient of a Canada Council Travel grant in Painting for six months tenure studying at Sophia University in Japan. In 1966, her Japan series was exhibited in Yorkville, Toronto. Her professional resume include graphic design posts in Toronto with MacLean-Hunter and Southam Business Publishers, Loblaws Supermarkets, Olympia & York Developments, Wal-Mart Canada Corp., and Thompson, Berwick, Pratt & Partners ( Vancouver, B.C.). She has had solo art exhibits from 1962 to recently with her sister, Mary Akemi Morris called, ‘Tashme Sisters’ at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center in August, 2019 in Toronto. The same year, ‘Miiko’, self published an illustrated childhood memoir, ‘Yellow Cherries- Life after Tashme’. In 2020, journalist Norm Ibuki, interviewed the sisters – ‘Nishimura Sisters- Before, During and after Tashme’- Part 1 and 2 for ‘Discover Nikkei’, an American site.