Learning From Citizen 13660

This post highlights the work of Mine Okubo, a Nisei (second generation) Japanese American artist whose inventive graphic memoir, Citizen 13660, documented and shared life in United States Internment Camps. Though widely unrecognized, her work carries important messages about mass-incarceration in the U.S. and the experiences of Japanese Americans before, during, and after World War II.

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Nisei artist Mine Okubo’s 1946 book, Citizen 13660, is a jarring first-person account of life within the Japanese internment camps in the United States. Because cameras were banned, Okubo’s illustrations were the first documentation of life within the camps. Her work has renewed resonance now, as the inhumane mass incarceration of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 in the 1940s is echoed under Donald Trump’s administration.

"Mine Okubo" from the collection of the Japanese American National Museum (2007.62.557_2)

"Executive Order 9066" From the National Archives

Recently, Japanese internment camp survivors protested outside of a proposed immigrant detention center in Dublin, California. These protesters demonstrated solidarity with immigrant communities targeted in the ICE raids triggered by Trump’s ”Executive Order Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” One protest sign featured a photo of an arrest in the 1940s with the caption

“We did this already."

In the 1980s, formerly-incarcerated individuals testified before Jimmy Carter’s Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. The testimonies resulted in the issuing of an official Government apology and the institution of the 1988 the Civil Liberties Act. Mine Okubo testified before the commission in 1981, speaking about her experience and concluding with her concerns that Japanese American incarceration had already been forgotten: 

I believe an apology and some form of reparation is due in order to prevent this from happening to others.  Textbooks and history studies on this subject should be taught to children when young in grade and high schools.  Many generations do not know that this ever happened in the United States. Whenever I speak about evacuation, they think it happened in Japan. I wish to present a copy of Citizen 13660 to the Commission for their record.

"Mine and Toku sharing a small meal, Tanforan Assembly Center, San Bruno, California, 1942" from the collection of the Japanese American National Museum (2007.62.47)

Mine Okubo boldly named Citizen 13660 after the family unit number she and her brother received during their incarceration at Topaz Relocation Center in Utah. Each page features a line drawing capturing the details of everyday life before and during her incarceration, accompanied by a short description. Her illustrations are mournful and evocative, depicting poignant personal moments along with general life in the camps. Still, scholars have noted the book’s lack of recognition beyond Nisei audiences and scholarly circles. Katherine Stanutz notes:

despite its generic novelty (the term “graphic memoir” did not exist in 1946) and its groundbreaking status as the first memoir of internment, Okubo’s text does not garner much attention outside of Asian American studies.

Mine Okubo’s work, like other stories of Japanese Internment, has gone widely untaught in schools. Chillingly, her testimony from 1981 holds true in 2025, as widespread ICE raids prove that Japanese American internment is not a misstep by a well-meaning national administration; it can be contextualized within a tragic pattern of racially-motivated mass incarcerations in the United States. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Donald Trump both based their executive orders upon the Alien Enemies Act, which was created by the Federalist Party to target French immigrants back in 1798. This is where the term “illegal alien” comes from, though all invocations of the Alien Enemies Act also resulted in the detention of legal U.S. citizens. Like all Nisei (second generation) Japanese Americans, Okubo held birthright citizenship.

Citizen 13660 is not only a notable work of genre experimentation and historical documentation, but it is also a prompt for Japanese American solidarity with detained immigrant communities. In one illustration, created before her incarceration, Mine Okubo looks at an open newspaper in distress. The headlines float around her... 

“F.B.I. Arrest Six”

“Aliens-Citizens, a Jap is a Jap”

“We Don’t Want Them.”

“Dangerous Criminals”

"Mine Okubo" with open newspaper surrounded by anti-Japanese slogans, Berkeley, California, 1941" from the collection of the Japanese American National Museum (2007.62.14)

Perhaps if Mine Okubo’s work had been honored in schools as essential art, literature, or history, the American public would have recognized the warning signs of unjust imprisonment more readily. In the preface to the 1983 edition of Citizen 13660, Okubo shared:

I am often asked, why am I not bitter and could this happen again? I am a realist with a creative mind, interested in people, so my thoughts are constructive. I am not bitter. I hope that things can be learned from this tragic episode, for I believe it could happen again.