Shigeru Yabu, seated, with (from left) HMWF Executive Director Aura Sunada Newlin, HMWF Board Chair Shirley Ann Higuchi, HMWF Vice Chair Douglas Nelson, animator Willie Ito, and JANM President and CEO Ann Burroughs.
Shigeru “Shig” Yabu, author of two books about the Japanese American incarceration at Heart Mountain, received a lifetime achievement award on Oct. 24 after a screening of an animated film adapted from his book “Hello Maggie!”
Yabu, 94, received the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation’s Douglas W. Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award for his decades of service on the foundation board and constant advocacy for teaching Japanese American history.
A native of San Francisco, Yabu and his family were forced from their homes and incarcerated at Heart Mountain during World War II. After the war, Yabu served in the Navy and was the first director of the Boys & Girls Club of Camarillo.
Yabu collaborated on “Hello Maggie!” with his longtime friend Willie Ito, who enjoyed a more-than-50-year career as an animator with Disney, Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbera. The book was adapted into a film produced by the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and directed by animator and educator Tony Tarantini.
In the book and the film, Yabu is forced to part with his pets when he is sent to camp. At Heart Mountain, he raises a magpie named Maggie, who becomes his friend and lifts the spirits of his family and neighbors.
The film was screened in the Japanese American National Museum’s Democracy Center. Afterwards, Ito joined JANM President and CEO Ann Burroughs, Heart Mountain Executive Director Aura Sunada Newlin, and Shirley Ann Higuchi, the foundation’s board chair, for a discussion about the film and the long-term effects of the Japanese American incarceration.
Ito signed copies of “Hello Maggie!” and a new book, “The Story of Lucy, Mascot of the 442nd RCT Medics.” A newly revised and expanded edition of “Hello Maggie!” is now available.
For more information on the film, visit www.hellomaggiefilm.com.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, a Smithsonian affiliate, preserves the site where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated in Wyoming from 1942 through 1945. Their stories are told within the foundation’s museum, Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, and its affiliated Mineta-Simpson Institute located between Cody and Powell. For more information, call the center at (307) 754-8000 or email info@heartmountain.org.