Miné Okubo’s career reflects both the turbulence of twentieth-century American history and the enduring resilience of an artist who transformed personal experience into public testimony. Born in Riverside, California, in 1912 to Japanese immigrant parents, Okubo pursued formal training in art at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Her early promise led to further study in Europe, and by the late 1930s she was working in California under the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. Between 1939 and 1942, she assisted with several public mural commissions, gaining experience in large-scale collaborative work and honing her distinctive visual style.

Her trajectory was abruptly interrupted by war. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the signing of Executive Order 9066, Okubo, along with more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, was forcibly removed from the West Coast. She was confined first at the Tanforan Assembly Center in California, a former racetrack, and later at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah. Despite the hardship and indignity of imprisonment, Okubo’s artistic production flourished. She created more than 2,000 sketches and drawings that documented daily life in the camps: long lines, stark barracks, moments of boredom, children at play, and the constant effort to maintain dignity under surveillance. These works became some of the most powerful visual records of incarceration, capturing details that official photographs often obscured or omitted.

Okubo’s turning point came in 1944, when Fortune magazine hired her as an illustrator. The commission not only provided professional recognition but also secured her release from Topaz. She moved to New York City, where she completed the assignment depicting scenes of daily life in imperial Japan. The irony was clear: Okubo, an American-born Californian who had never set foot in Japan, was tasked with visualizing a world she knew only through research and imagination. Yet the work marked a decisive transition, offering her a path out of confinement and into the professional art world of New York.

After completing the Fortune project, Okubo remained in New York, choosing the city as her permanent home. She established herself in Greenwich Village, where she lived and worked for the rest of her life. Immersed in the city’s postwar artistic ferment, she pursued painting and illustration while exhibiting in local galleries. She also contributed to publications such as Life, Time, and The New York Times, demonstrating her versatility as an artist able to move between fine art and commercial assignments.

In 1946, she published Citizen 13660, a groundbreaking book that wove nearly 200 of her camp drawings with concise textual commentary. It was the first personal account of incarceration released in book form, offering both a visual and narrative testimony. The book received wide attention, praised for its candor, humanity, and understated critique of wartime injustice. Today it remains a cornerstone of Japanese American literature and a critical historical document.

Okubo’s decades in New York cemented her reputation as an independent, uncompromising artist. She lived modestly, often described as private yet fiercely dedicated to her craft. Her Greenwich Village apartment doubled as her studio, filled with canvases and drawings. She continued to exhibit, publish, and lecture, ensuring that the story of incarceration would not be forgotten.

By situating her life in New York within the larger narrative of wartime displacement, we recognize Miné Okubo not only as a chronicler of history but as a central figure in the cultural fabric of the city. Her journey—from Riverside to Topaz, from Fortune’s commission to Greenwich Village—embodies both the struggles and the creative resilience of Japanese Americans in the twentieth century.

References

• Unforgotten Stories – Rebuilding Community: Miné Okubo. Digital Museum of the History of Japanese in New York. https://www.historyofjapaneseinny.org/unforgotten-stories/rebuilding-community/

• Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo. Smithsonian American Art Museum. https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/pictures-of-belonging