While both Hibi and her husband George were influenced by late nineteenth-century European and American painters, Hibi was particularly influenced by the work of Mary Cassat. Many of her oil paintings from the camp years depict the intimate daily life of mothers at work, the cold sterility of the barracks, and images such as persimmons and New Year's rice cakes, that symbolized a nostalgia for a previous life. In 1943, she received a prize for a still life of flowers that was exhibited in a show of work by incarcerated artists that was held at the Friends Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Of the seventy-two paintings, one is in the collection of the Oakland Museum of California, one was given to the San Francisco Buddhist Church, seven are in a private collection, and sixty-three were donated to the Japanese American National Museum between 1996 and 1998. Some of the works that George Hibi created while interned are stored at UCLA. When Hisako Hibi her family was sent to internment camp, her artwork was later influenced by the conditions that they were all accommodated. She was raising her two children in the camp, having her document her experiences as a painting she created, "Laundry Room (1944)". In the camp bathing facilities were inadequate for the inmates, so the mothers improvised by bathing their children in the laundry room. After the war the Hibis relocated to New York City. George Hibi died shortly afterwards in 1947, and to support herself and her children, Hibi took up work as a seamstress in a garment factory. She later returned to school, studying under Victor D'Amico at the Museum of Modern Art which influenced her painting style, becoming increasingly abstract. In 1953, Hibi became a U.S. citizen, taking advantage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. A year later, she moved back to San Francisco where she remained until her death in 1991. In 1954, Hibi worked as a housekeeper for Marcell Labaudt, who was important in the visual arts and directed the Lucien Labaudt gallery. During this time, she was able to work in a studio in Labaudt's garage. Labaudt presented the work of both Hisako Hibi and her husband George Matsusaburo Hibi at the Lucien Labaudt gallery, with Hisako's work being shown in 1970 and her husband's in 1962. A neighbor from Hayward, who had stored several of the family's paintings, died by 1954, and many of the early works were lost.