Interviews

1. Parents

2. First Exposure to Animation

3. December 7th, 1941

4. Father’s Optimism

5. Tanforan Assembly Center

6. Dusty Weather at Topaz, Utah

7. Mother in Camp

8. Father making shell brooches at Topaz

9. Father’s Postwar Barber Career

10. First Encounter with Walt Disney

11. Disney Drawing Tests

12. His mentor, Iwao Takamoto

13. The Dopey bank that survived the war

Ito,Willie

(b. 1934) Award-winning Disney animation artist who was incarcerated at Topaz during WWII

Father’s Optimism

One of the things about my dad, being Nisei, he was very optimistic. You know, the rumor around Japantown was, oh, sell everything. Get what you can, we’ll never come back. All these stories about Nazi Germany and what was going on in Europe. One of the rumors that we would hear was, what’s going to happen. If Japan won the war, or if US wins the war, what’s going to happen? Either way, we’re all just going to be lined up and executed, so we’ll never comeback.

But my dad, he always thought that, yeah we’ll be back. In fact, he was so optimistic that one of his best friends was a Chinese family. And so he offered Chuck, to live in our home, which he had just purchased in 1939. And so Chuck and his family, and had a daughter about my age at that time. They came and lived in the house. And so after the war, when we came back to San Francisco, we had a home to come back to.

Date: August 26, 2015

Location: California, US

Interviewer: John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Willie Ito was born July 17, 1934 in San Francisco, California to nisei parents. Seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at the age of five inspired a lifelong love of animation. After his family's incarceration in Topaz, Utah during World War II, Willie returned to California to pursue an art career, attending the Walt Disney favorite Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles (which later became CalArts). Under the mentorship of legendary animator Iwao Takamoto, Willie's passion blossomed into a long career in the animation world through golden ages at Disney, Warner Brothers, and Hanna-Barbera. His credits span from The Lady and the Tramp and What's Opera Doc? to The Flinstones and the Yogi Bear Show.

Willie continues drawing to this day, including illustration work on multiple children's books about the Japanese American World War II experience. You can also find him signing sketches and greeting fans at San Diego Comic-con. (September 2016)