Graphic Novels

1 articles

Citizen 13660 (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir, Graphic Novels
Displacement, Evils of racism, Expression through art, Will to survive
Widely available

Published in 1946 as the last camps were being shuttered, Nisei artist Miné Okubo 's illustrated eponymous memoir, Citizen 13660 , has the distinction of being the earliest, first-person, book-length account of the American concentration camp experience. Always a vigorous booster of her own work, Okubo promoted the book that came to define her career as "the first and only documentary story of the Japanese evacuation and relocation written and illustrated by one who was there." [1] All told, Okubo produced an estimated 2,000 portraits of camp life in a range of styles and materials, including ink, charcoal, and gouache, while imprisoned at the Tanforan temporary detention camp in California and the Topaz concentration camp in Utah. Okubo's voluminous output notwithstanding, it was primarily Citizen 13660' s roughly 200 line-drawings that established her standing as a major chronicler of and historic witness to the camp experience.

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