Okubo, Miné, 1912-2001

d. February 10, 2001.

Painter, New York, N.Y. ; b. 1912., d. 2001, at age 88.

Miné Okubo (1912-2001) was born in Riverside, CA, and educated at University of California, Berkeley, where she received her BA and MA degrees. After graduation she studied in Paris with Fernand Leger for eighteen months before returning to the US with the outbreak of WW II. Back in California she worked under the Federal Arts Project, assisted Diego Rivera on his Treasure Island mural (Pan American Unity), and exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Art. In 1942 she and one of her brothers (she had six siblings) were sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center south of San Francisco and then transported to the Topaz, Utah, relocation center. At Topaz, Okubo taught art to children and worked as the art editor for Trek, a Nisei literary magazine. In her spare moments she would wander around the camp sketching the people and activities. Her camp sketches, and the book based upon the internment experience, Citizen 13660, are what she is best known for. The book is still in print and won the American Book Award in 1984. In 1944 Fortune magazine brought her out of internment to help illustrate a special (sympathetic) issue on Japanese Americans. She decided to remain in New York and made Greenwich Village her home until her death.

Biography

Miné Okubo was born on June 27, 1912 in Riverside, California. Okubo attended Riverside Junior College and went on to receive both a bachelor's and master's degree in Fine Arts from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1938, Okubo was awarded the Bertha Henicke Taussig Traveling Fellowship to study art in Europe for eighteen months. At the conclusion of her fellowship Okubo returned to the United States and accepted a job as an artist through the federal Works Progress Administration in Northern California. The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on December 7, 1941 would forever change the course of Okubo's life. On April 24, 1942 she was forced into a Japanese internment camp and had to relocate to the Tanforan Relocation Camp in San Bruno, California and was later transferred to the Central Utah Relocation Camp in Topaz, Utah. While being held at the relocation camp Okubo completed numerous pen and ink drawings that illustrated daily life for the camp's detainees. She would later publish this collection of drawings and sketches in the acclaimed book Citizen 13660 that gave the world insight into the treatment of the Japanese at these camps. Okubo eventually moved to New York, New York and continued her career as an artist creating numerous artistic works throughout her career that included illustrations for several publications such as Fortune, Time, and Life . She also served as an active voice of the Japanese American community and even testified before the Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation in 1981. Miné Okubo died on February 10, 2001 at the age of 88 in Greenwich Village in New York City.