#citizen 13660

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Kango Takamura - an uncollected graphic novel

For the past few years, I have been volunteering at Manzanar National Historic Site with my family. We usually stay in the town of Independence, which has an incredible little museum, The Eastern California Museum. When I was there in May, I was taken by the watercolors made by Kango Takamura. He was incarcerated at Manzanar and made watercolors that depicted the administrative life of the camp,…

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Ishii, Arriola, and stereotypes

Ishii, Arriola, and stereotypes

The MoMA just posted a comics biography of Ruth Asawa done by Jillian Tamaki. On the second page, Tamaki mentions Chris Ishii and a comic strip created about life at the Japanese-American concentration camps. I had never heard about this strip before. As someone who is interested in and taught Citizen 13660, I wanted to learn more. The strip created by Chris Ishii was called “Lil’ Neebo” and it…

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Citizen 13660 By Miné Okubo

This comic is a first-hand account of the life of a prisoner in Japanese-American internment camps during WWII.

Each page is structured the same way: a panel of artwork at the top, and a few paragraphs describing the scene below. There’s no immediate flow between panels, they could be the same second or different days. In the introduction the author explains that the first drafts of this book were drawings she made and sent to friends on the outside—and she always intended for them to be published.

My first impression of the book was that it was surprisingly unemotional and stark, but further readings give me the opposite impression. Okubo’s cartoon self reacts subtly as she observes the camp; a frustrated face at an armed guard, a sad smile at a couple dancing, tears on a hard face as she says goodbye to her home.

There’s a podcast that analyzed this book and scooped a bunch of words out of my mouth, so you should listen to it. And then find a copy and buy it.

This isn’t an analysis of the book but there’s something I remember from being in school about learning about Japanese American internment. When I was in elementary school we had a special history lesson about the camps, which I remember because our history lessons were usually out of books or watching films. But this one was a presentation, where an Asian American actress gave a slideshow and narrated a story, told in first-person perspective as a teenage girl whose family was imprisoned. The only real details of the story I remember are: they had to ask white friends to hold on to their belongings, the food at the camp had so little nutrition some people got sick, and when they were released they found the white friends had lost or SOLD some of their stuff, but she was reunited with her dog.

I think maybe we had this lesson because I grew up in Western Washington, where people where actually taken from? It was my first experience with a history lesson that felt completely real, like it was happening in front of me. I hope they’re still doing that presentation, and more like it. I know I’m not completely making this up because I happened upon this same presentation happening years later at my high school.

(Big thanks to Maré Odomo for lending me this book.)