Rate this book

Citizen 13660 (1946)

by Mine Okubo(Favorite Author)

4.24 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0295993545 (ISBN13: 9780295993546)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

University of Washington Press

review 1: It is of utmost importance for survivors of trauma, like the Japanese who endured the racist and violent internment during World War Two, to tell their own stories. The book's greatest success was Okubo's drawings of her life in the camps from 1942 until 1945 (she is primarily an artist), which are evocative, informative, sometimes bitter, sometimes joyous, and—this needs to be said—amazingly great at eluding the grips of censors as she was released from her camps. Published in 1946, Citizen 13660 was the first account of Japanese internment which was told from a survivor's perspective and which showed what was really happening in these concentration camps (as FDR and the government called them): forced assimilation, starvation, unsanitary conditions, exploited labor. ... moreThe list can go on and on. My one problem with the book was that it becomes apparent that, overall, Okubo believes Japanese internment was merely a minor blot on American exceptionalism, "freedom," and "democracy" and not another manifestation of American genocidal colonialism, which continues until today. But maybe that was a way to avoid censorship. Hmmmm.
review 2: The use of the nine blank pages was rather ingenious as it gives the impression that what it written is impossible to portray with any accuracy. The reader is forced to try and imagine something that can not be shown in a picture, or even a photograph. The reader has to consciously apply themselves to what was read and so the point being made is more prominent and driven home to the reader. First blank page, 11, shows the absence of her father and leaves both the main character and the reader at a loss to understand why. The next blank on page 13 seems to show just how quickly they had left and how abrupt it had been for them. Page 16 has no picture because how could anyone portray 110,000 people in a single image much less give the feeling of so many, most people have never even been in a group larger than about five hundred. The fourth blank is on page 118 and describes perfectly the emptiness of the land they were traveling through and makes the reader wonder after reading the last line of the page "The meals on the train were good after camp fare." Page 128 which shows the rooms they had been given to live in is followed by a plank page with illustrates how much they really had. Page 138 adds to the feeling even more as the text tells of how they had divided the space even further. Page 176 is just the perfect illustration as the first sentence is the end of the one from the page before and reads "thereby made themselves stateless persons." The second to last blank page is on page 200 and is somewhat chilling to read at the text tells of how the teenagers fought to stay and not lose all they had gained by being labeled disloyal. The final blank is on page 206 and I feel it was a wonderful choice as the text reads :"In January of 1944, having finished my documentary sketches of camp life, I decided to leave." The blank was masterful in that is showed that she was done, there was nothing more to draw and so there was nothing drawn. less

Download links for: Citizen 13660

Advertising