Brownicity: Many Hues. One Humanity

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Miné Okubo was an American artist 👩🏻‍🎨 and writer. 📖 She is best known for her book “Citizen 13660,” a collection of 189 drawings and text chronicling her experiences in Japanese American internment camps during World War II.Miné’s parents came to the United States in 1904 to represent Japan 🇯🇵 at the St. Louis Exposition of Arts and Crafts. Okubo’s father was a scholar and her mother was a calligrapher who graduated with an honors degree from the Tokyo Art Institute.🎓 Miné was born in Riverside, California, and, encouraged by her mother, studied the arts in college. She eventually received a Master of Fine Arts degree from UC Berkeley in 1938.👩🏻‍🎓🎨 Receiving the Bertha Taussig Memorial Traveling Fellowship in 1938, Okubo spent two years traveling in France and Italy where she continued her development as an artist. 👩🏻‍🎨 In Paris, she studied under the famous avant-garde painter Fernand Léger. 🎨 But in September 1939, war broke out in Europe. Okubo was stranded in Switzerland at the time, and she eventually obtained a pass allowing her to return to the United States.🧳Then on April 24, 1942, within five months of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and two months after Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, Okubo and her brother, Toku Okubo, were relocated to the Japanese internment camp of Tanforan. At the former racetrack in San Bruno, California, they lived in a converted horse stall furnished with army cots and a constant smell of manure, adjusting to the twice-daily roll calls, curfews and the lack of privacy. After six months of confinement, Okubo and her brother were transferred to the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah. Cameras 📸 were forbidden in the camps, but Miné felt compelled to document daily life through her art. ✍🏼📒 Almost never without her sketchpad, she recorded images of drama, humiliation, and everyday struggle. She explained that she “had the opportunity to study the human race from the cradle to the grave, and to see what happens to people when reduced to one status and one condition.” She made over 2000 drawings and sketches of daily life in the camps, many of which were included in her book.While interned, Okubo helped to found the Tanforan Art School and later the Topaz Art School, in conjunction with Berkeley art professor Chiura Obata and other fellow artists, who were also detained. At both locations, Okubo taught art lessons to children, adults, and senior citizens.Fortune Magazine noticed Okubo’s drawings after she entered a magazine contest with her drawing of a camp guard. They asked her to come to New York City to work as one of their illustrators, which allowed her to leave the internment camp in 1944. Okubo continued her career as an artist, earning numerous awards and recognitions.🏅🎖️ In 1981, she testified before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians about her life in internment, and the passing of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988 recognized the illegal removal of people of Japanese ancestry from their homes in World War II. Internees were awarded financial compensation. Miné Okubo died in 2001. 🇯🇵🇺🇸Take some time to 👀 through these links to learn more about Miné Okubo. ❤️🤍 You’ll be glad you did!🖼️🎨 National Women’s History Museum www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mine-okubo 🖼️🎨 Densho Encyclopedia encyclopedia.densho.org/Mine_Okubo/ 🖼️🎨 Miné Okubo Art Collection JANM janm.emuseum.com/groups/mine-okubo-collection/results 🖼️🎨 Center for Social Justice and Civil Liberties Riverside csjclriverside.wordpress.com/tag/diego-rivera/ #AAPI #AAPIHM #aapiheritagemonth #AsianAmericans #PacificIslanders #educateyourself #education #learn2learn #antiracismeducation ... See MoreSee Less