Museum of Riverside

Reading the Walls Online Exhibit - Room #2 : Case 3

Miné Okubo and Sumi Harada

Miné Okubo was born on June 27, 1912 in Riverside, California. She graduated from Riverside City College and received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Berkeley. On April 24, 1942 she was evacuated to Tanforan Assembly Center at San Bruno, California and then transferred to Topaz Internment Camp in Utah. Okubo was the Arts Editor for the Topaz publication Trek. In 1946 she published Citizen 13660 which documented her experiences during internment. It was the first publication telling of life in the camps by an internee. Though Sumi Harada was three years older than Miné, the two maintained a friendship that began in high school in the 1920s and ended only with Sumi’s passing in 2000. Miné moved to New York City near the end of World War II. Over the years her letters to Sumi were always illustrated, usually with ink brush. Miné Okubo also gave Sumi some paintings.