Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1544997
14 KEYFRAME D I A L O G U E this page: Ito welcomed TAG members into his home to share stories from his illustrious career in animation. opposite page: (left) The Dopey bank that inspired Ito as a child; Ito with TAG members including People of Color Committee members. When Ito was a little boy, he watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A particular happy-go-lucky dwarf resonated with him. One day, when he happened upon a little Dopey coin bank, he pleaded with his dad to buy it. That small, tangible character brought unlimited inspiration to Ito. Sadly, there came a day when he had to part with it. In 1942 after Pearl Harbor, xenophobia took hold in the U.S., and the government began to imprison Japanese Americans in internment camps. Ito came home from school one afternoon to learn that FBI agents had come into the house to confiscate anything they deemed as weaponry or contraband. He immediately ran upstairs to check on his prized Dopey figurine. Thankfully, it was still there. Soon after, though, 8-year-old Ito's colorful San Francisco world turned bleak as his fam- ily was rounded up and sent to the middle of the Utah desert where they were housed in tar-paper barracks at the Topaz Internment Camp. Surrounded by armed guards in tall towers, Ito's life changed, and he longed for his little Dopey bank. Reflecting on this experi- ence with his fellow TAG members, he shared that he felt a sense of pride ANIMATION LEGEND WILLIE ITO TAKES A GROUP OF TAG MEMBERS ON A JOURNEY THROUGH HIS EXTRAORDINARY CAREER. A VISIT TO REMEMBER Earlier this year, a small group of TAG animation artists and People of Color Committee members had the opportunity to visit Willie Ito at his home in California's Monterey Park. Stepping inside Ito's house, filled with animation treasures and memorabilia, it was immediately clear that he had a lot to share—beginning with the first animation object he ever acquired. at seeing how resilient and enterprising his Japanese culture is. He also recalled that he didn't feel the full weight of what was happening because he was so young. He gained a kind of independence, since children ate separately from the adults. And he spent hours drawing flip-book ani- mations in whatever Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogs he could get his hands on. After the war, when Ito grew older, his peers went off to become lawyers and doctors. But he still had the animation bug, and he questioned his desire to be a cartoonist. He considered medical illustration as a more respectable alternative. Fortunately, his San Francisco City College professor shrewdly persuaded him that he belonged in Hollywood. He recommended Chouinard Art Institute. At Chouinard, Ito studied under industry icons like Don Graham, T. Hee, and Marc Davis, and he became good friends with Jerry Eisenberg and Corny Cole. Then in 1954, a 19-year-old Ito stepped into an elevator at Walt Disney Productions for a job interview. As the doors began to close, two men entered. One of them was Walt Disney himself. The very next person Ito met that day was Iwao Takamoto, the assistant of famed animator Milt Kahl. Takamoto was nine years Ito's senior and the first Japanese American artist hired at