Miné Okubo Collection
Drawings and paintings by Miné Okubo, a Japanese American artist, created while incarcerated during World War II in California and Utah; and postwar in New York City, New York.
75 Years Later: 1946 to 2021
In 1946, artist Miné Okubo published Citizen 13660, an illustrated memoir that captured her experience of being detained in America’s concentration camps during World War II. Okubo became the first former incarceree to publish a memoir of the incarceration.
Comprising nearly 200 drawings and accompanying captions, Citizen 13660 depicted daily life at Tanforan detention center in San Bruno, California and Topaz concentration camp in central Utah from Okubo’s perspective.
Through humor and irony, pathos and satire, Okubo created an important visual and historical record that conveyed the incarceration experience in a way that cameras could not.
Miné Okubo was born in Riverside, California in 1912. She and several of her siblings pursued art, influenced by their mother’s training at an art institute in Tokyo. Okubo received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in art at the University of California, Berkeley.
After graduating, Okubo received a prestigious traveling art fellowship in Europe where she continued to study and paint. Once war began in Europe in 1939, Okubo returned to the U.S. early. She found work with the Federal Arts Project with muralist Diego Rivera in San Francisco.
Soon, though, her career was turned upside down following a declaration of war on Japan, when in February 1942, Executive Order 9066 created an exclusionary zone on the West Coast and laid the groundwork for the forced removal of Japanese and Japanese Americans.
Okubo and one of her younger brothers were incarcerated first at Tanforan in San Bruno, California and later at Topaz, Utah. She continued to draw incessantly while incarcerated, producing thousands of sketches that captured daily life.
Okubo was released in 1944 and resettled in New York. She continued to dedicate her life to art: teaching, working as an illustrator, and painting. She died in 2001 at the age of 88.
Portions of Mine Okubo's vast personal and professional collection were donated to the Japanese American National Museum, including the manuscript of Citizen 13660, personal correspondence and wartime documents, and many artworks.
Samples of just three of the many colorful artworks created by Mine Okubo, postwar, in New York City. She loved vibrant colors, and often included cats, children, and women in her artwork.
Text, images, and video by JANM Collections Management and Access department staff. To license, publish, or reproduce any of these images, please contact JANM. For research access and further information on the Miné Okubo collection, please visit JANM's page on the Online Archive of California. For the past exhibition at JANM, please visit Mine Okubo's Masterpiece: the Art of Citizen 13660.
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