Interviews

1. Dream of Being an Artist

2. Loss When Leaving for Manzanar

3. Camouflage Net Weaving in Manzanar

4. Developing Art Skills in Camp

5. Return to Los Angeles

6. First Portfolio & Disney Interview

7. Interactions with Walt Disney

8. Moving to Hanna-Barbera after 15 Years at Disney

9. Disney vs. Hanna-Barbera

10. Development of Scooby Doo TV show

11. Designing Scooby Doo’s Character

Iwao Takamoto

Japanese American animator for Walt Disney and Hanna Barbera (1925-2007)

Developing Art Skills in Camp

She gave me a job which I had to drive teachers who taught at the elementary level school which was located halfway up the hill where the camp was situated. For lunch I’d drive, pick up the teacher, bring them down, and drive them back, et cetera. In the meantime, I hung around the office and I guess I did a certain amount of sketching for personal amusement and she thought it was a nice thing for me to be doing and she was kind enough to take me into the storehouse for school supplies and showed me the section where all the art supplies were and just help yourself to whatever you want. So that’s what I spent an awful lot of time doing, just doing that plus doing this job of driving teachers up and down the hill.

arts California concentration camps Manzanar concentration camp United States World War II World War II camps

Date: August 6, 1998

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Janice Tanaka

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

Interviewee Bio

Iwao Takamoto (April 29, 1925 – January 8, 2007) was a legendary animator for Walt Disney and Hanna Barbera, most famously designing Scooby Doo in the late sixties. Incarcerated at Manzanar after graduating high school, Iwao leveraged his art skills into a job at Disney upon returning to Los Angeles, working on classic animated films like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. He would go on to mentor other Japanese American animators such as Willie Ito, who worked with him on Lady and the Tramp. After leaving Disney for Hanna-Barbera in 1962, Iwao continued animating, as well as producing and directing films like Charlotte's Web (1973) until his retirement. (June 2021)