The Citizenship Question: Miné Okubo, Margaret Anderson, Sensus Communis

Carlson talks about citizenship. In 1942, the US War Department, with the help of the Census Bureau, imprisoned some 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry in makeshift concentration camps. About two-thirds were American citizens. This "evacuation" had as a proximal cause the US Declaration of War on Japan in Dec 1941. Mine Okubo and her brother Toku Okubo were taken to the Tanforan Assembly Center, a former racetrack in San Bruno CA and one of more than a dozen temporary camps, before they were transferred to the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah. Over the three years of her confinement, she made (according to one friend) thousands of sketches, nearly two hundred of which became the pen-and-ink drawings of Citizen 13660, a work of almost heartbreaking humanity in the face of institutionalized hatred and cruelty.