Alum Ross Ishikawa’s Illustrations Illuminate Japanese American History

Bellevue College and the King County Library System have partnered to celebrate alumnus Ross Ishikawa, a Northwest artist who illustrated the graphic novel, “We Hereby Refuse,” at an event on July 31 on campus. As part of King County Library’s 2025 One Bellevue One Book: Intergenerational Book Club, Ishikawa will discuss his creative process for the graphic novel, which is based on acts of resistance to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The graphic novel, published by the Wing Luke Museum and Chin Music Press, took nearly four years to complete and involved four creators in a process that Ishikawa found similar to his days of doing group projects at Bellevue College.

Written by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura, the text is drawn from the true stories of Jim Akutsu, who resisted the draft because he was classified an enemy alien; Hiroshi Kashiwagi, who refused to fill out the “loyalty questionnaire” required by the US government and renounced his citizenship; and Mitsuye Endo, whose Supreme Court case helped end the incarceration of thousands in 1944. Artist Matt Sasaki illustrated the Kashiwagi story while Ishikawa illustrated the stories of Akutsu and Endo.

Ishikawa first learned about the project in 2017. Since he was working on a graphic novel about his Japanese American father, who was among those deported from the West Coast, he was intrigued by the call for artists to work on “We Hereby Refuse.”

“This was perfect timing for me,” he recalled. “I had a few pages from my graphic novel project, which was from the same time period, so I submitted those.”

For the next four years, deadlines came and went as the creators layered more and more complexity into the original idea. Creating the images required hours of research, using hundreds of reference photographs and other materials so Ishikawa could accurately portray the real people and physical setting of these stories.

An interview with character Endo’s best friend inspired Ishikawa’s favorite drawing: a scene of Endo dancing around the room when she learned that the Supreme Court ruled in her favor.

“The imagery in the interview was so evocative,” he said. “That scene was the first thing I sketched out in the very early stages of getting to know the writers. In my talk, I discuss how the sketch evolved over the four years. The basic bones of the scene were right but there were some nuances that changed over time as we found more information about where it happened and other things.”

The resulting 150-page nonfiction graphic novel was published in 2021.

The project required four people with very different backgrounds to come together to achieve a common goal. This period reminded Ishikawa of his student days at Bellevue College, with a group of people working together on a classroom assignment. Working with different levels of experience during his classes at Bellevue College helped Ishikawa with the group dynamics of creating a graphic novel with three other people.

“I was the only one with graphic novel experience,” recalled Ishikawa, who also acted as an animation consultant for a follow-up project by the Seattle Channel TV station when they wanted to animate one chapter from the book. But he emphasized that he learned from the others, particularly from Abe’s profound knowledge of the real people involved, which helped inform his illustrations.

Like many Bellevue College students, Ishikawa returned to school seeking a new career after decades working as a design lead and project architect. Changes in architecture software meant either undergoing extensive training to continue his career or he could pivot to something new. Ishikawa decided that he’d like to learn more about game design.

“I always wanted to be a cartoonist as a kid. Game design sounded like a fun thing and appropriate for a former architect, as they need someone who can think in 3D to design places (in a video game),” Ishikawa said.

But the more classes he took, the more animation and 2D art began to capture his interest. He found the exposure to many different types of graphic software extremely useful. Prior to coming to Bellevue College, all his cartooning was done by hand with pencil and paper. Adapting his skills to digital tools also helped when the graphic novel came along, when he trained himself on a type of software commonly used for making manga.

Ishikawa took an internship with an animation company while at Bellevue College, which led to a decade of creating 2D animations after graduation.

“It was a good experience, just drawing fun cartoons. I didn’t know a job like that existed,” he said. “It was what I wanted to do as a kid. I went into architecture instead because that was a ‘real’ job. Growing up in my small town, I didn’t have exposure to cartoons as a career.”

Today, he works as a Motion Graphic Artist for Black Spectacles, an eLearning platform serving the architectural community. This combination of his past career and his new one proved to be a perfect job, Ishikawa said. He’s also returned to working on his original idea of creating a graphic novel about his parents’ courtship during World War II.

Listen to Ishikawa discuss the graphic novel at the “One Bellevue One Book: We Hereby Refuse Illustrator Ross Ishikawa” at 2 PM on Thursday, July 31 at the N Building on campus. The Bellevue College Bookstore will be selling copies of “We Hereby Refuse,” and Ishikawa will be doing a book signing.