UNIQUE MEDICAL DRAWINGS. Clinical Coordination of Anatomy and Physiology with drawings by Mine Okubo TOGETHER WITH Mine Okubo: An American Experience

New York: Springer Publishing Company, Inc., 1959. First edition, first printing.

UNIQUE MEDICAL DRAWINGS IN RARE HUMAN ANATOMY-PHYSIOLOGY TEXT ILLUSTRATED BY JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNED DURING WW2 WHO BECAME NOTED ARTIST--TOGETHER WITH EXHIBITION CATALOG.

9 3/4 inches tall volume, color printed paper covers, previous owner signature to inside front cover, i-xiii, 320 pp, 101 figures. Light edgewear to covers, light browning to text, very good in custom archival mylar cover. TOGETHER WITH catalog of retrospective exhibition at the Oakland Museum in 1972: 8x10 inches paper bound book with color printed cover, 56 pp, 27 plates (color and black & white). Near fine.

MINE OKUBO (1912 – 2001) was an American artist and writer. Born in Riverside, California, she attended Riverside Junior College and later received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley. A recipient of a fellowship in 1938, Okubo spent two years traveling in Europe where she continued her development as an artist. While in Paris, she studied under the avant-garde painter Fernand Léger. From 1939 to 1942, following her return to America, Okubo collaborated with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in San Francisco for the Works Progress Administration. However, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Okubo and her brother Benji were interned 1942 to 1944. While Okubo was in the internment camp, she made over 2,000 drawings in charcoal, watercolor, pen, and ink, depicting her everyday experiences. Often these drawings showed her observations of women and children in the camp. After the war ended, she was encouraged to compile her drawings into a book. In 1946, her book, entitled Citizen 13660 was published. It contained 206 drawings from her time in the camps--the first published account of the experience from an internee. The title of the book refers to the number assigned to Okubo by the US government during her internment period. In 1984, Okubo's book won the American Book Award. After her release she relocated to New York to continue her career as an artist, earning numerous awards. Okubo's art is found in exhibitions at museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She remained in New York, continuing her career as an artist, for the next half-century. In 1959, Okubo took up a new challenge when she was commissioned by the publisher Springer to provide illustrations for the anatomy textbook Clinical Coordination of Anatomy and Physiology. Okubo stated later that she had carefully studied and memorized anatomical details for the drawings. The original drawings are now included in the Mine Okubo archives at Riverside College. From the PREFACE: "The drawings, in their selection and emphasis and their very own manner, express the ideas of correlated study. They were made by Mine Okubo, who worked with us for a year in developing the new concepts of pictorial presentation."

MARTHA PITEL, PhD, RN (1921-2014) was a pioneer in academic nursing. After graduating from nursing school in Johnson City, NY in 1942, she served as Second Lieutenant in the US Army during World War II. In 1954 she earned a PhD in anatomy and physiology from the University of Minnesota, and in 1958-59 she studied fetal endocrinology at the Universite de Paris. In 1964 she was appointed chair of the Department of Nursing of the University of Kansas, and in 1978 she became chair of nursing education at Northwestern University, where she developed a baccalaureate program in nursing. She then traveled to Russia, Japan, Brazil, and Egypt to teach nursing overseas.