Miné Okubo

Miné Okubo
Born	Miné Okubo (1912-06-27)June 27, 1912
Known for	Drawing, Painting, Writing

Miné Okubo (June 27, 1912 – February 10, 2001) was an American artist during World War II. She drew over one thousand sketches of her time in the Japanese American internment camps. Many were turned into formal paintings and went on to win many prizes. Her sketches and artworks gave a lot of information about what is was like in the internment camps.

Life

In 1912, Miné Okubo was born in 1912 in Riverside, California. Her parents were both Japanese immigrants who had entered the United States twelve years before. They worked in the St. Louis Exposition of Arts and Crafts; Okubo's mother being a calligrapher and her father was a scholar. Later, her mother raising seven children and her father became a gardener. She attended Riverside Junior College in 1931, Graduated UC Berkeley with Bachelor of Arts degree in art in 1935, and again with Master of Arts degree in art and anthropology in 1936. She won the Berthat Taussig Traveling Art Fellowship, so she was able to study art for two-years in Europe. However, with the rise of Nazi Germany and the starting of World War II, she escaped back to the States when she still had six months left on her fellowship.After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt sent Japanese American immigrants and their children to internment camps. During Okubo's time in the internment camps, she drew sketches of how life was, which included day-to-day activities such as having to share restrooms, being bored every day, and living in undesirable conditions. She made over a thousand drawings, which she compiled together into a novel called Citizen 13660. Citizen 13660 was published in 1946, and was the first primary source of the Japanese American internment camp experience. Miné Okubo is most known for her novel Citizen 13660, but she was an important and prolific artist who kept drawing until her death in 2001.