Before He Animated For Disney, He Sketched Cartoons In An Internment Camp

Willie Ito, 85, wanted to be an animator from the moment he first saw Snow White in theaters as a young boy.
"I remember the seven little men walking across the screen, singing, 'Heigh-ho, heigh-ho!' and I thought to myself, 'Wow, that's what I want to be.' Not one of the seven dwarves, but an animated cartoonist," Willie told his son, Vince Ito, 60, at StoryCorps last month.
But when Willie was 8, those dreams looked dim. During World War II, Willie's family was among tens of thousands of people of Japanese descent — most of whom were American citizens — who were forcibly removed to internment camps. In 1942, two months after Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that gave the military clearance to incarcerate those perceived as a potential threat. In reality, there was little-to-no evidence of actual subversive activity among the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated.
Willie tells Vince he'll never forget arriving at the camp in Topaz, Utah — with its rows of tar-paper barracks — from their home in San Francisco. "The dust was whipping up like fine talcum powder and I remember looking at my grandfather, who had on his dark overcoat and fedora," he recalled to his son. "And it was all white with dust."