“My thoughts shifted from the past to the future”: Time and (autobio)graphic representation in Miné Okubo’s Citizen 13660

Abstract

This article explores time in Miné Okubo’s graphic memoir Citizen 13660. Drawing on the work of Homi Bhabha, and comics scholars like Thierry Groensteen, it argues that Okubo’s complex representation of time serves several functions. First, it undermines expectations of the linear memoir form by making links between different panels, thus forcing the reader to reconsider historical continuities and breaks. Secondly, it shows how authority figures responsible for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II consciously manipulated ideas of time, history and lineage in order to cast Japanese Americans as dangerous others. Thirdly it reveals, how ironic contrasts between words and images in Citizen 13660 serve to undermine racialized ideological constructions and begin to deconstruct hegemonic ideas about national identity and belonging.

Keywords:

• Miné Okubo
• Citizen 13660
• time
• Japanese Americans World War II
• graphic autobiography

Acknowledgements

All images are reproduced with the permission of the Estate of Miné Okubo. The author wishes to thank Seiko Buckingham for permission to use them.

Notes

1. And often enshrined in law: the Naturalization Act of 1870, for example, extended citizenship to African Americans but not to Asian Americans.

2. Later in the story, as Okubo and her brother are being led to the barracks at Tanforan Race Track, she turns to look directly at the reader again. Heather Fryer (2008) reads this as a challenge to the reader to disbelieve and denounce the pioneer story with which the authorities were trying to frame the internment process (86). It is another example of braiding.

3. This is itself a chronotope: “Pearl Harbor” has come to refer to both a place and an event.