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Miné Okubo (;, June 27, 1912 – February 10, 2001) was an American artist and writer. She is best known for her book '' Citizen 13660'', a collection of 198 drawings and accompanying text chronicling her experiences in
Japanese American internment During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), mostly in the western interior of the country. Abou ...
camps during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. Following the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Territory of ...
, Okubo and her brother Benji were interned to the Tanforan Assembly Center and then the
Topaz War Relocation Center The Topaz War Relocation Center, also known as the Central Utah Relocation Center (Topaz) and briefly as the Abraham Relocation Center, was an Internment of Japanese Americans, American concentration camp in which Nisei#American Nisei, Americans ...
from 1942 to 1944. There she made over 2,000 drawings and sketches of daily life in the camps, many of which were included in her book. After her release Okubo relocated to New York to continue her career as an artist, earning numerous awards and recognitions.


Early life

Born in
Riverside, California Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. As of the 2020 census, the city has a population of 314,998. It is the most populous city in th ...
, Miné Okubo attended Poly High School, Riverside Junior College, and later received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the
University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...
, class of 1938. A recipient of the Bertha Taussig Memorial Traveling Fellowship in 1938, Okubo spent two years traveling in France and Italy where she continued her development as an artist. While in Paris, she studied under the famous early 20th-century avant-garde painter
Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painting, painter, sculpture, sculptor, and film director, filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually ...
. From 1939 to 1942, following her return to America from Europe, Okubo created several murals under commission by the
Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administratio ...
. She was also commissioned by the United States Army to create mosaics and fresco murals. She collaborated with the Mexican muralist
Diego Rivera Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957) was a Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the Mexican muralism, mural movement in Mexican art, Mexican and international art. Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted mural ...
in San Francisco for the
Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...
. Prior to the order for internment, while living in Berkeley, CA, Okubo had been creating mosaics for
Fort Ord Fort Ord is a former United States Army post on Monterey Bay on the Pacific Ocean coast in California, which closed in 1994 due to Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) action. Most of the fort's land now makes up the Fort Ord National Monument, ...
and the Servicemen's Hospitality House in Oakland, CA. Okubo obtained a special permit, an exemption to the 5-mile travel limit from home, necessary to perform her work in Oakland.


Internment

On April 24, 1942, within five months of the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Territory of ...
, and two months after Roosevelt's
Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a President of the United States, United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. "This order authorized the fo ...
, Okubo along with her brother, Toku Okubo, who had been a student at Berkeley, were forcibly relocated to the Japanese American assembly center at Tanforan. Living in a converted horse stall furnished with army cots, they were forced to adjust to the twice-daily roll calls, curfews, and the lack of privacy. Following six months of confinement at Tanforan, Okubo and her brother were transferred to the Topaz Relocation Center, Utah. Almost never without her sketchpad, Okubo recorded her images of drama, humiliation, and everyday struggle. While interned, Okubo taught art to children and later entered a magazine contest with her drawing of a camp guard. Okubo helped found the literary magazine ''Trek'' while at Topaz. When ''
Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fate * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (19 ...
'' magazine learned of her talent, the firm hired her as an illustrator, an arrangement that allowed her to leave the camp after a two-year confinement and relocate to New York. Prior to leaving Topaz for New York City, Okubo shipped a crate of her belongings to Fortune magazine's offices.


''Citizen 13660''

After arriving in New York, Okubo published a book about her and her brother's experience as prisoners in the internment camps in California and Utah. The
graphic novel A graphic novel is a self-contained, book-length form of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and Anthology, anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics sc ...
, called ''Citizen 13660'', documents the struggles and achievements of the Japanese American and Japanese people imprisoned at the camps. The title comes from the number assigned to her family unit; the book contains almost two hundred of her pen and ink sketches accompanied by explanatory text. Okubo promoted her graphic novel as "the first and only documentary story of the Japanese evacuation and relocation written and illustrated by one who was there." ''Citizen 13660'' is her only published book as she considered herself a painter and teaching artist. Okubo's simplistic line drawings and neutral narration provide the reader with a unique perspective on the historical record of the internment. The book was published in 1946 and has been in print for more than 75 years. It was redesigned and republished with an introduction from Okubo in 2014. The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California, put on an exhibit celebrating the 75th anniversary publishing of ''Citizen 13660'' in 2021.


Later life and death

Okubo collaborated on the April 1944 special issue of Fortune magazine's article on Japan, a work that included a small number of her drawings — the first time any of her work had been published. She remained in New York, continuing her career as an artist, for the next half-century. She worked as a freelance illustrator and later resumed painting full-time. She continued to paint months before her death. Okubo's art is found in solo and group exhibitions at museums including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
in New York, and has been shown in many cities. In 1948, designer
Henry Dreyfuss Henry Dreyfuss (March 2, 1904 – October 5, 1972) was an American industrial designer. He is known for designing the Western Electric Model 500 telephone, the Westclox Big Ben alarm clock, and the Honeywell T87 Round Thermostat. Career Drey ...
commissioned Okubo to create a large Mediterranean map mural for the main foyer of a new fleet of ships called "4 Aces" for American Export Lines, and her work was later pictured in a ''Fortune'' magazine article, ''Modern Art Goes to Sea''. Okubo testified in New York before the
Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) was a group of nine people appointed by the U.S. Congress in 1980 to conduct an official governmental study into the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Pro ...
following its establishment in 1981. ''Citizen 13660'' — by then widely reviewed and recognized as an important reference book on the internment — was presented to the commission by Okubo. Her book has been used in courses taught by teachers throughout the country for topics including female artists, artists in war, and artists of color. Becoming nationally recognized, Okubo received numerous awards, among which included the 1984 American Book Award for ''Citizen 13660''. In 1991, the
Women's Caucus for Art The Women's Caucus for Art (WCA), founded in 1972, is a non-profit organization based in New York City, which supports women artists, art historians, students, educators, and museum professionals. The WCA holds exhibitions and conferences to promo ...
awarded her a Lifetime Achievement Award, and she is listed in ''Distinguished Asian Americans: A Biographical Dictionary'' edited by Hyung-chan Kim. At the time of her death in February 2001, Okubo was living in her canvas-filled apartment near
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...
,
Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
. Following her death in 2001, Okubo's various artworks and papers were transferred to Riverside Community College District, a primary beneficiary of the estate, for preservation of the collection. The transferred items include approximately 25 banker boxes of reference materials, photographs, slides, books, writings, letters, printed material, and a host of paintings, many unmounted as either loose canvas or rolled. Okubo became the subject of a play, ''Miné: A Name For Herself'', written by Riverside authors Mary H. Curtin and Theresa Larkin. The play, interwoven with reminiscences about Okubo's later life as a New York artist, portrays her experiences in the camps of Tanforan and Topaz and shares her artwork and aesthetic principles with the audience. On February 22, 2006, Riverside Community College honored the memory of its noted alumna when it announced that a street on the campus had been renamed Miné Okubo Avenue. As of August 2009, the school was working to catalog, archive, and curate its collection of Okubo's personal writings, sketches, and paintings. The collection has since been completed. It can be viewed at the Center for Social Justice and Civil Liberties in Riverside, California. In February of 2024, a traveling exhibition produced by the Japanese American National Museum called ''Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa,
Hisako Hibi Hisako Shimizu Hibi (May 14, 1907 – October 25, 1991) was a Japanese-born American Issei painter and printmaker. Hibi attended the San Francisco Art Institute, California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California where she garnered experi ...
, and Miné Okubo'' featured Okubo's work in a broader American context through the lens of her Japanese American identity. The exhibit was shown at the University of Utah, Utah Museum of Fine Arts (February 24–June 30, 2024) and will travel to the
Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...
(November 15, 2024–August 17, 2025), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (October 2, 2025–January 4, 2026), Monterey Museum of Art (February 5, 2026–April 19, 2026), and Japanese American National Museum (late 2026). The accompanying catalog, ''Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo'', edited by ShiPu Wang, was published in December 2023.


Bibliography


''Citizen 13660''
– Book cover and content preview at archive.org, where it can also be borrowed and read for free ** **


Collections

Okubo's work is held in the following collections: * Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, California *
Oakland Museum of California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...
, Oakland, California * Riverside Community College Center for Social Justice and Civil Liberties, Riverside, California * Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.


See also

* Benji Okubo *
Hisako Hibi Hisako Shimizu Hibi (May 14, 1907 – October 25, 1991) was a Japanese-born American Issei painter and printmaker. Hibi attended the San Francisco Art Institute, California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California where she garnered experi ...
* Chiura Obata


Notes


References


Sources

*


External links

* *Spring, Kelly
"Mine Okubo"
National Women's History Museum. 2017. *The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Miné Okubo, photo#1

Miné Okubo, photo#2

Miné Okubo, photo#3
*Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, CA State Univ., Los Angeles, Theresa Larkin
Miné Okubo Photo
*Voices from the Gaps, Department of English, University of Minnesota
Miné Okubo Biography / Criticism
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Okubo, Mine 1912 births 2001 deaths Writers from Riverside, California 20th-century American women writers American women writers of Asian descent American writers of Japanese descent American artists of Japanese descent Japanese-American internees Works Progress Administration workers Riverside City College alumni 20th-century American women artists American Book Award winners