Customer Reviews

Citizen 13660

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Okubo's book is a valuable eyewitness account of a sad period of U.S. history, the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans during WWII. I don't know anything about Okubo's life, but her book suggests she was one of those relocated. The book is illustrated on every page with great, expressive pen-and-ink drawings, and each picture is accompanied by a caption thoroughly explaining the scene depicted. The story begins with her family awaiting relocation orders, being sent to two different camps in the interior valleys of California, and concludes with her release. She does a great job documenting daily life in the camps, like the ways the prisoners created a community by organizing school for their children, publishing a camp newspaper, staging performances, etc. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of Okubo's book is her lack of anger and bitterness. One would think forced relocation would spawn a lot of anger, but she emphasizes positive aspects of life at the camps, and even expresses some wistfulness about leaving upon her release. I'm not sure how we should read that--is it the genuine response of a young, resilient woman who was able to see the whole experience as an adventure? Her attempt to dignify the prisoners by emphasizing how well they made the most of the oppressive conditions? Or, seeing that the book was first published in 1946, a conscious effort not to voice more outrage than mainstream America was willing to tolerate from a Japanese-American woman so soon after our war with Japan? I wish I knew. In any case, Citizen 13660 is a very important document, which deserves a place next to other illustrated accounts of prisoner camps like Art Spiegelman's _Maus_ and _The Book of Alfred Kantor_.

In her book Citizen 13660, Mine Okubo describes life in the Japanese-American internment camps established by the U.S. government soon after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. The camps were for all people of Japanese origin in the United States, both citizens and noncitizens. Mine, a college student, and her brother were taken by train to temporary barracks, then later they were moved to their permanent quarters at Camp Tanforan. Life at the camp was hard; living quarters were small and nearly without privacy, people fought over the scarce supplies and they had to line up to eat, use the bathroom, and wash. It was stiflingly hot in the summer, and it grew surprisingly cold for a "desert" in the winter. Mine, however, made it through the internment years and soon returned to "normal" civilization. Soon after the war, she wrote and illustrated her book, Citizen 13660. Her story takes you inside the internment camps and shows you what life was really like for an American of Japanese descent in 1945.

Mine Okubo lived and painted for more than 50 years in the same Manhattan studio apartment. She died in 2001. She was known not just as Citizen 13660 from the internment camps, but as a talented and dedicated artist (see her profiled in the video Persistent Women Artists ... . This book, a reprint of the 1946 original, uses her deceptively simple style to tell how she was forced to leave behind the life of an American college student to become a Japanese-American detainee, and what her artist's eye observed in the camps.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. At that moment, the terrible suffering and war that seemed so far away from America reached its shores. America was no longer safe. People panicked, and anyone of Japanese decent became the enemy, even if they were loyal U.S. citizens. Not so much unlike the Jews of Europe, the Japanese of America were sent to detention camps out of fear that they might still be loyal to Japan and betray the U.S. Among the many Japanese prisoners was Mine Okubo, who wrote and illustrated her biography, Citizen 13660, about what it was really like to live in Japanese internment camps during World War Two. Okubo's account is full of detail and elaborate drawings on every page, giving the reader an inside scoop into what internment camp life was really like.

Citizen 13660 is a complete account of Okubo's life from the start of WW2 in 1939 to when she was released from the internment camp after living in several other camps over a couple of years. She was a Bay Area resident living in Oakland when she and her brother were forced from their homes along with 110,000 other Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. They had to put most all their belongings into storage and leave for Tanforan Relocation Center, which was located in what is now South San Francisco. The living conditions were poor, and the camp was a mess. It was not the ideal place for any human beings to live. She goes into great detail about every aspect of camp life, and it was startling to realize just how bad the Japanese Americans had it. For example, "the flush toilets were always out of commission," (pg. 72) "the sewage system was poor," (pg 78) and their living quarters was a "20 by 9 ft. horse stall." (pg 35)

If you are looking for a book that is well written and a great piece of literature, I would recommend reading some other book. Citizen 13660 is mostly just simple sentences describing the detailed illustrations on every page. Rather than describing her life through words, she tells her story through beautiful pictures. Yet even with minimal words, she still manages to get her message across. I recommend this book to people who are looking for an easy yet interesting read, and to people who would like to know the real story behind the Japanese internment camps.

The novel Citizen 13660 is an exceptional graphic novel that describes the events of the Japanese internment camps. I truly enjoyed the novel by Mine Okubo because it used both illustrations and text to describe the events of the internment camps. Another reason that I really enjoyed the novel was because Okubo describes the camps the way that she experienced them. She doesn't add detail to make the events more or less atrocious. In other words, it wasn't a personal attack on the American people, which is what I expected before opening the novel. Furthermore, Okubo provides a basic understanding of what Japanese internment camps, which is something that I feel that people need to learn about. I think that it would be an exceptional novel for junior high and high school students to read since many American history books don't discuss the Japanese internment camps. Also, since cameras, video recorders, etc. were banned from internment camps and since most of the camps have since been destroyed, Okubo's illustrations illuminate what it was like to live in the internment camps. The images of the hard straw coming out of a thin covering that was supposed to be their bed and the restrooms that provided no privacy and unhealthy conditions are stuck in my head. For those that truly believe these camps were created for the protection of Japanese people, I would like you to look at Okubo's illustrations and explain to me your definition of the word protection.
As previously stated, there are limited pictures and videos from the Japanese internment camps. However, if you are interested in viewing footage of the internment camps, the film "Something Strong Within" provides footage from ten different internment camps. Through this film, you can see the horrid conditions that the Japanese people had to live in. It also shows images of teenagers graduating high school in an internment camp. I found these images to be extremely effective because there are so many things that we take for granted that the Japanese and Japanese Americans didn't have the opportunity to experience. Through this film and Mine Okubo's graphic novel, people can learn about the struggles that the Japanese experienced during World War II.

I don't know how anyone could read this novel and not appreciate the text and visuals simultaneously. It would be easy to just read the text, but the visual representations created by Mine Okubo are profound and provide the viewer with a greater understanding of the events that Mine Okubo and other Japanese Americans underwent while in the camps. Unlike other graphic novels, the text and image are separate and not integrated. Some may find this difficult to read the text and than view the picture or vice versa, but the sketches were created while Mine Okubo was in the camp and than the descriptive text was added later to correspond with the visuals. These sketches were a descriptive journal for Mine Okubo, who like so many others wasn't allowed to bring in cameras or video recording devices to capture what she underwent and saw while in the camps. Personally, I found the text and visual continually playing of one another and neither one would have been nearly as successful without the other.

Many of the internment camps no longer exist and what remains, "are pieces of concrete, pipes, and wire," they are but a cemetery to the past. Mine Okubo has created a piece of living history and has produced a personal memoir for herself and the United States. This even should never be forgotten and should be a key portion of history that is taught within our private and public schools. Art is an expressive outlet that provides a means of releasing tension, anger, sadness, and anxiety. During the internment other artists and writers were creating profound works of art to communicate and further understand their own circumstances. For anyone that questions the relevance of this text a film that is worth watching is called, "9066 to 9/11." This film takes a look at the secretive footage taken by Japanese American Internees in the camps and corresponds their hardships and mistreatment with our current predicaments based on the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

I, personally, have never been into comic books, but since reading Maus I and Citizen 13660 I have found a new appreciation for art mixed with text. This graphic novel is excellent. I disagree with the idea that we need to know the "deep insight into the feelings of the author"; that is what makes this novel so powerful. She intentionally leaves the emotions up to her audience. This is not necessarily a story about woe is me. It is a story about survival, when life hands you lemons you make lemonade and you share it.
I do agree with the dark sense of humor within this novel. And I must say I like it. Life was hard for the Japanese. These camps were not easy and sometimes rather inhumane. The weather was extreme, the food was scarce, and there was absolutely no privacy. But Mine Okubo is able to take some terrible scenarios and laugh at her characters, which enables her audience to laugh. It also made me think about what it means to have freedom and privacy. Today, people rarely even talk to their parents and siblings, let alone, their neighbors. As depicted in this novel people were practically living on top of one another. And to be to find a sense of humor through it all shows an amazing sense of character.
Overall, I think this novel is a thoughtful, selfless, piece of art. It shouldn't lose credit for being a graphic novel, or lacking drama. It should be applauded for the value of the factual, overall picture painted within it. It should be applauded for allowing its readers to be affected in anyway that it may, the book world is full of tear jerkers, we don't need anymore soap opera text filling our minds with junk.

This powerful graphic novel was drawn and written by Artist Mine Okubo when she was a teenager at a Japanese internment camp during World War II. Okubo's elegant black and white drawings and wry text make CITIZEN 13660 on a par with Art Speigelman's MAUS as a war time testimony.
It was Mine Okubo's lifelong dream to have the art and writing from her internment experience published in a proper book.
I first saw these powerful stark drawings when Author Artist Betty LaDuke told me about her favorite teacher and showed me a worn copy of the original 1946 printing of CITIZEN 13660. LaDuke was nominating her mentor for the National Women's Caucus for Art Awards, and went to Okubo's New York City apartment to photograph the hundreds of art works that filed the small space. Okubo would be the first Asian American woman honored by the WCA, which began its Honor Awards in 1979 with a ceremony at the White House recognizing Georgia O'Keeffe, Louise Nevelson, Selma Burke, Isabel Bishop and Alice Neel. Betty and I sat on the Honor Awards Committee and co-edited the catalog when Mine was honored with an exhibition at The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC in 1991. One of my favorite memories is meeting Mine and introducing her to my baby daughter. She was a dignified classically beautiful woman with clear luminous skin and eyes, and a rapier wit. There is a great picture of Mine with me and Betty in the great hall of The National Museum of Women in the Arts standing with the other Honorees Otellie Loloma in her traditional Hopi dress, Mildred Constantine, Delilah Pierce and Theresa Bernstein who couldn't remember if she was 102 or 105. The Honor Ceremony was a highlight in women's art history. It was the first time the WCA Honorees included women from all four directions. Mine Okubo and the other Honorees stood there because of decades of their own hard work and determination and the love, devotion and support of many others like Betty LaDuke, the women of WCA and The National Museum of Women in the Arts.
It was Mine's lifelong wish to see CITIZEN 13660 published properly. It finally was in 1983, two years after WCA honored her and decades after she first created it in 1946. It is a beautiful book with a bold important cover, both text and art is stark and truthful, but not without humor. Okubo's seminal memoir could finally take its rightful place among other war testimonials.
Okubo and others of her generation blazed a path as a woman artist when it took great determination and grit to prevail. Artists today have an easier go of it because of the courage of pioneers like Okubo.

Mine Okubo, a Japanese-American art student when WWII broke out, created this singular study of the plight of Japanese interned in the United States following the attack at Pearl Harbor. Illustrated with drawings of a primitive, yet engaging, style Citizen 13660 goes through Ms. Okubo's experiences from her designation as a member of Family 13660 (in the United States!) to everyday life life in camps hastily put together to house internees to her departure from the system in 1944. This is a great first-hand account of a chapter in American history in which we failed to meet our own high standards for human rights.

Book was pretty much brand-spankin' new as far as I can tell, and arrived when it was supposed to. Super!