26 pages • 52 minutes read
Miné OkuboCitizen 13660
Nonfiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Adult | Published in 1946A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPages 1-49Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 1-25 Summary
Okubo was in Europe on an art fellowship from University of California when England and France declared war in 1939. With national borders secured, Okubo was stuck in Switzerland until she was able to acquire passage on a boat to France. She had learned that her mother was ill, and she was desperate to find her way back to the US as soon as possible. When she finally arrived in Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay region of California, her mother had already passed. Okubo continued to live with her brother for the next several years.
In 1941, Okubo and her brother heard on the radio that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Several days after that announcement, the US declared war on Germany and Italy. Okubo heard rumors of “possible sabotage and invasion by the enemy” (10) regarding suspicion of Japanese American loyalty. Several citizens and noncitizens of Japanese ancestry were being “evacuated” (11) to an internment camp. This included Okubo’s father.
US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 in 1942 ordered for the evacuation of every American citizen and noncitizen of Japanese ancestry in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah. While the evacuation was voluntary at first, the US military intervened a month after the executive order was issued and mandated the evacuation. As a result, Okubo had to report to a local Civic Control Station set up by the Wartime Civic Control Administration to register her and her brother for evacuation. Her family unit was given the number 13660.
Pages 26-49 Summary
The US government seized control of properties of evacuated Japanese Americans while they were interned. Internees were instructed to bring work clothes, indicating a reality that Okubo would soon discover upon arrival to the former racetrack, the Tanforan Assembly Center, with her brother where they were both to be detained. Okubo and her brother were examined medically, and then assigned to Barrack 16, Room 50, which was a former stable stall. They were given spring cots that they were to assemble themselves and filled bags with straw to serve as mattresses. When mealtime came, thousands of interned Japanese Americans would crowd the mess hall, waiting for hours to be served meager meals of potatoes, bread, and sausages. When night came, Okubo and her brother tried to sleep despite the noise traveling through the stalls from other internees and the cold coming in through the poorly constructed stable.
Pages 1-49 Analysis
Prior to the issuing of Executive Order 9066 by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it was not immediately apparent that it would be dangerous for Okubo to possess the same ethnicity as a national enemy to the US. In the first few pages of Citizen 13660, the graphic novel describes the early days of World War II when the declaration of war seemed to have a daily benign presence. After returning to the US from Europe, Okubo notes that she had a “good home and many friends” (7). It seemed at first that war only affected Europe. Okubo would eventually learn that as an ethnic minority in the US, she would face the repercussions of war within her own nation’s borders.
The issuing of Executive Order 9066 made clear to Okubo that Japanese Americans were targeted as a result of Japan’s involvement with World War II. After hearing that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, Okubo and other Japanese Americans knew that they would face prejudice for being Japanese. While Germans and Italians were also discriminated against for Germany and Italy’s involvement in the war, Okubo and other Japanese Americans were fearful of how US xenophobia and racism would factor into their country’s policymaking against nonwhite national enemies. In the US, Japanese Americans are racialized as nonwhite and considered perpetual foreigners, which contributed to the US government’s justification for their internment.
Okubo’s descriptions of the registration and induction process for internment portrays the dehumanizing process that Japanese Americans had to undergo during World War II. Okubo and her brother were reduced to the number 13660 and were treated as if they were not people but animals. The Tanforan Assembly Center was a racetrack that was modified as housing for internees though the conditions were no better for humans than they were for horses. In Okubo’s descriptions of the bureaucracy of the camp, she notes the assignment of numbers to people and spaces to emphasize how each internee became another faceless minority to the US government.
