Born June 27, 1912

Riverside, California

Died February 10, 2001

New York, New York

Artist

"What is beautiful about Citizen 13660 … and the reason it is still in print and used in college classes all across the country today, is that it combines detailed, evocative sketches with simple, elegant prose."
—Washington Journal, December 15–21, 2000

Born an American citizen, Mine Okubo had never been to Japan and spoke little Japanese. Yet she was imprisoned during World War II (1939–45) along with 112,000 other Japanese Americans because of her Japanese ancestry. Before the war, Mine was building an art career through academic studies in California and training in Europe. She would later apply her artistic skills to record her almost two years in the stark, isolated internment camps. The resulting drawings and written accounts would document this gross injustice toward a segment of the American population for later generations to learn from. She also...