<Begin Segment 20>

KL: What about after that? I would like to hear about your career.

WI: Okay. After I graduated, I knew I wanted to be a cartoonist. But I was seventeen when I graduated high school, so I was figuring, okay, I've got to go to college a couple of years. So I attended San Francisco City College, which is a two-year school, at which time I took nothing but art, art courses. And so when it was getting close to graduating, my friends, my contemporaries, all that, they were now attending Cal Berkeley, you know, University of California Berkeley, Stanford, University of San Francisco, taking up things like pharmacy, pre-med, engineering, lot of the girls were taking, going into teaching and all that. So I started thinking, I says, "God, I want to be a cartoonist, but that seems so inhumanitarian. Everyone else is doing something so substantial." [Laughs]

So I went to my art instructor and I said, "You know, since I like doing fine rendering and muscles and all that, I think I'm going to pursue medical illustrating." And he looked me straight in the eye and just said, "You're not gonna be happy." He says, "You're destined to be a cartoonist, an animator." So he says, "Here's what I'm gonna do. My contemporary at Chouinard Art Institute, Don Graham, is the dean of the school. I'm gonna write him a letter of introduction, and this summer, you go down to L.A., take your portfolio, and apply for a scholarship." And I'm thinking, "It'll never happen." So I, the day arrived for me to leave, I told my mom and dad, "Well, I'll be home in the fall, and I'll probably attend San Francisco Art..." I forgot the name of the school even. "But I'll be home, so keep my bed warm." So I came down, I applied for the scholarship, and I was awarded the scholarship. But it was a working scholarship for the summer, so I figured once the summer's over, if I choose to stay or I deem myself good enough to continue, then my dad had the college fund set aside for me, so I might do that.

Then while I was taking classes, I always, always wanted to see the inside of Walt Disney Studios. I just grew up looking at the Encyclopedia Britannica and I would go right to "animation" and I would see pictures of the Disney Studio. Oh, I was obsessed since I was five. So I said, well, as long as I have my portfolio, I'm going to use it as a ticket to see the inside of the studio. I seriously don't expect to be hired because I'm not finished art school, I don't have a degree and whatever. So picked up the phone, called Disney personnel, and they granted me an interview. So, again, it was a hot summer day in Burbank. A friend of mine drove me up there, I was dressed in my San Francisco vest, which was a wool jacket and tweed slacks. [Laughs] And even my necktie was tweed. Everything was just hot. And I'm carrying this portfolio which weighs a ton. And he dropped me off in front of the studio, and I see the sign, Walt Disney Productions. Oh, I was so intimidated, I thought, "Oh, this is it." But here's this little Japanese boy that grew up in the camps with nothing but Japanese. I come home, I'm living in my enclave of nothing but Japanese in Japantown, and here I am at Walt Disney Studios. I really didn't know what to expect. So I walk on to the lot, and the animation building, the big sign, "Animation." And there's a signpost that says, "Mickey Avenue and Dopey Drive," which you see pictures in all these books about animation. I said, wow, there's that iconic sign, and I just kind of rubbed up against it. [Laughs]

I finally went into the building, and the blast of the refrigerated air conditioning. But meanwhile, the walk from the parking lot to the animation building, I had really worked up a sweat with my San Francisco vest. So I walk in and I see the elevator and I know I have to go to the fourth floor so I pressed the button. The elevator door swings open and I step in and press four and I'm waiting, and the door starts to close. Then suddenly it swings open, and there standing before me is Walt Disney himself. And he's with an associate and they're both yakking away, but as they step into the elevator, Uncle Walt looks right at me and acknowledges my presence with a polite nod. Then they both turn around and they continue yakking. And then, meanwhile, the elevator starts up, and I'm looking at the back of Walt's head, thinking, "Oh, my god." World's longest elevator ride for four floors.

Then finally we get up there, the door swings open, they leave screen right, I go over to personnel and I announce my arrival. Ken Sealing was the personnel manager, so he gets on the intercom and says, "Mr. Ito's here now for his appointment." So a couple minutes later, in comes two guys and one big hulking guy with kind of a pink face, and he was like a production supervisor. Well, following behind him, the contrast, was a little Asian guy, and he had this kind of look on his face like, "What am I doing here?" type of look, with a crew cut. So I got totally intimidated again seeing someone I totally didn't expect to see. But then when we were introduced, "I'd like you to meet Iwao Takamoto, one of our animators." "Willie Ito," and shook his hand. So I kind of relaxed and everything and we made chit-chat. And then they took my portfolio and went in the other room, and I sat in the outer room. But on the walls, just covered with original Walt Disney animation art that I just couldn't get enough of. So finally Ken Sealing emerged and says, "Well, thank you for coming in. We enjoyed looking at your portfolio. Don't call us, we'll call you." Says, "Hey, I know the routine," I'm thinking. I'll just finish school and I'll wow them with my professional portfolio that I learned four years in school.

So about two weeks later I came home from night school, I was tired, and it was hot in school, and I had to clean up the ceramics room, had all the dusty clay thing, my hair was all covered with it, whatever. I came home, and I was just ready to hit the sack. But there was a Western Union telegram stuck in my door. Oh my goodness, so I gingerly opened it, and, of course, back then, a telegram could only mean extremely good news or bad news. And being away from home with my parents up there, I go, oh, my gosh. So I read it and it says it came from Walt Disney Productions. "Please report to the studio Monday morning, 8 a.m." So I did.

And walking, I got off the bus and you'd walk up half a block to the studio main entry, and parked in front of the studio was an old Helm's Bakery truck. Now, I'm sure you don't remember that, but that was one of the things. Like you had food trucks that stop in front of a place, back then it was like the Helm's Bakery that stopped there. And I think it was a nickel apiece, I bought six doughnuts. Two for breakfast, two for lunch, and two for dinner. That's all I could afford, being a student. And so I walk into the studio, now I'm more intimidated than ever. So I report to our production manager and he assigns me a desk and gives me a bunch of drawings of various Disney characters, Goofy and whatever. So I spent the morning practicing drawing the characters, and then at noon I turned it in, went out to lunch.

After lunch I came back and he says, "Well, we reviewed your drawings, we like it very much, and you're hired." Oh, my goodness. So he says, "We're going to start you in the lady unit. And I'm thinking, "Lady unit?" Ink and paint is all ladies, and maybe that's an entry level. When you go in and you trace drawings on acetate and color, and so I thought that was it. But I figured, well, I'm in the studio, so I'll make the most of it. Well, it turned out that lady meant lady from Lady and the Tramp. And so he told me to go report to my, the fellow that's going to train me, and so I walk up the hall, knock on the door, "Come in." Open it, and there's Iwao Takamoto standing there. He says, "Yeah, welcome aboard. You're going to be working with me on Lady and the Tramp," and whatever.

And so that's how it started. He was such a precise artist that I felt I could never learn how to do this the way he does it. He did it with such ease, and every drawing he made was perfect. Every drawing I made, I didn't think was perfect at all and needed a lot of guidance. But I persevered, and after about six months, the production of Lady and the Tramp was coming to an end. So I worked on other scenes other than under Iwao's tutelage, and then finally we completed, we went on overtime, so consequently, because of overtime, I couldn't continue my schooling at Chouinard except for Saturdays. But by Saturdays I was so burnt out. But it worked out.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.