Willie Ito’s incredible journey from a WWII incarceration camp to Disney animation comes to life in ‘Hello, Maggie!’

It’s an understatement to say Willie Ito has lived an incredible life. 

The San Francisco-born Japanese American was one of the 120,000 people held at internment camps across the country during World War II. He later went on to become an animator for Disney, Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros., creating some of the most iconic moments in American cartoons, such as the spaghetti kiss in “Lady and the Tramp,” “One Froggy Evening,” which gave us the iconic Warner Bros. Michigan J. Frog, and the karate-chopping dog, Hong Kong Phooey. 

Now, the 92-year-old is on a mission to share a story about the endurance of hope and love even from behind barbed wire. 

On Wednesday, Aug. 26, Ito will be in Santa Cruz – thanks to Atlantis Fantasyworld in collaboration with The 418 Project – to show “Hello Maggie!”, an animated short film based on a children’s book of the same name. The story was illustrated by Ito and is an autobiographical tale written by his childhood friend, Shigeru “Shig” Yabu.

It stars a 10-year-old Yabu interned at Heart Mountain Relocation Center near Cody, Wyoming, who befriends a baby magpie that fell out of a tree, which he names Maggie. The bird quickly becomes a camp favorite, spreading joy and laughter in a place designed to break the human spirit. 

“This is such a significantly important story,” said Joe Ferrara, owner of Atlantis Fantasyworld. “A piece of American history that people need to be more informed about, and what better way to do it than through a child’s eyes?”

Tom Michael, general manager of The 418 Project, says the event represents an important coming together of the community. 

“Joe brought an event to us that was already so close to our soul,” he said. “It’s an art piece full of cultural and historical importance and an event structured around the community.” 

Initially, Ferrara planned to rent the theater on River Street, but when he told Michael about his plans, Michael offered the space for free. Ferrara says Hotel Paradox also offered a complimentary two-night stay in exchange for Ferrara – who is also a lifelong musician – playing two nights at its Solaire Restaurant + Bar. Because of that, Ito will also do a free book signing at Atlantis the following day, Thursday, Aug. 27, from 1 to 4 p.m. 

“It’s a testament to the strength of community and how we all work together,” Ferrara said. 

For Ito, “Hello Maggie!” is not only a kid’s story, but also a reminder of how quickly the country’s opinion can change concerning human rights when decisions are based in fear instead of reason. 

“Remember during COVID there was the Asian American and Pacific Islander anti-hate campaign,” he said, referring to the Stop AAPI Hate campaign started in 2020 after physical and verbal attacks on Asian Americans rose due to racially prejudiced perceived connections to the COVID-19 virus. “You hate to see that kind of America again.”  

Willie Katsutoshi Ito Jr. was born in San Francisco in 1934 to a close, loving family that went to the movies twice a week. On one particular outing, when Ito was 5, his father took him to see a movie that set him on his future path. 

“There, in living Technicolor, seven little men marched across the screen singing, ‘Hi ho, hi ho,’ and I said ‘That’s what I want to be!’,” he said with a laugh. “Not one of the seven dwarves, but a cartoonist.”

Ito taught himself how to draw by tracing his favorite cartoons, but two years later history would take an unexpected turn. 

He remembers one day his uncle was courting his soon-to-be aunt when the two decided to take him on a picnic to Santa Cruz. They walked along the Beach Boardwalk and happily ate a bento lunch on the beach. When the fog rolled in during the late afternoon, they decided to head back to San Francisco, but were stopped at the city’s entrance by armed guards, who demanded to check their IDs. 

“As we entered the city we saw all these kids on the corners with newspapers that read, ‘WAR!’ and I never heard that word before so I wondered what it meant,” said Ito. “But I soon found out.”

It was Dec. 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. Just over two months later, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 and the Ito family became among the 120,000 Japanese Americans forcibly removed from their homes into one of the 10 main internment camps (the Department of Justice also operated another 20 for Japanese, German and Italian immigrants along with Latin Americans). 

Ito’s family was first sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, before they were moved to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah. Ito remembers the guns, barbed wires and the locations being called “concentration camps” before government public-relations teams changed the name to “internment camps” in an effort to disassociate from the Nazi camps overseas. 

Each bunk house had a potbelly stove for heat, and dump trucks would come by twice a week with coal as fuel. However, the lines for coal soon began to grow so long that Ito’s father began using Sears-Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs for the fire. 

“We had to order our necessities because we didn’t have a store,” Ito said. “I would take the catalogs and, on the margin of each page, I would draw a bouncing ball or stick figure jumping and playing to make my own flipbooks.”

After his family’s release in 1945, Ito continued to draw and eventually earned a scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute, now known as the California Institute of the Arts, in Southern California. The school was – and still is – used as a pipeline into the industry, and Ito took classes under people such as Marc Davis, one of Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men” core of animators. 

Ito, however, skipped a few steps in his career path and would never graduate.

One day, while still a student, he decided he wanted to see the Disney Studios in Burbank, and he brought along his portfolio as his “ticket to get in.” In what now seems like real-life foreshadowing, he even met Walt Disney while riding the elevator. Ito showed his portfolio to the hiring staff and was able to get a tour of the studio. 

Two weeks later, he came home to a Western Union telegram telling him to return to the studio the following Monday for a test. He was asked to draw Disney cartoon characters, and then hired on the spot. He was 19. 

At that time, the Ink & Paint Department was made up of all women who would ink and color the drawings onto celluloid cells once the initial pencil drawings were done. So when Ito was assigned to something called the Lady Unit, he thought he would be helping the women by washing brushes and fetching coffee.  

“I thought, ‘At least that means I’m in the studio and I’ll work myself up,’” he said. “I had no idea there was a movie called ‘Lady And The Tramp’ in production.”

For his first assignment, Ito was tasked with working on the movie’s iconic scene, when Lady and the Tramp kiss while eating spaghetti. 

“What a way to start a career!” said Ito with a laugh. 

After that movie wrapped, Ito briefly went back to school, but decided the broke student life wasn’t for him, so he got a job at Warner Bros. Cartoons.

Under the direction of the legendary Chuck Jones, Ito worked on some of the company’s most iconic “Looney Tunes” cartoons, such as “What’s Opera, Doc?” with the famous “Kill the Wabbit” scene, and “One Froggy Evening,” about a man who sees a frog dance and sing but will perform only when nobody else is looking, leading everyone to think he’s crazy. Both have since been deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and are preserved in the National Film Registry.

While at Warner Bros., Ito was approached by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) to make an animated series of the Bob Clampett puppet show, “Time For Beany,” which became “Beany and Cecil.” Ito was offered double his salary at Warner Bros., which – as he says – made him “up for the challenge.” 

After “Beany and Cecil” was not renewed for a second season, Ito received a call from Hanna-Barbera to work on a new show it just sold called “The Jetsons.” Over the next 14 years at Hanna-Barbera, Ito would also work on such classics as “The Flintstones,” “Scooby-Doo,” “The Yogi Bear Show” and “Josie and the Pussycats,” and he also created the crime-fighting, kung-fu hound Hong Kong Phooey.

By the mid-1970s, Ito was burned out on television and decided he would try his hand at freelancing. He worked on a few Disney comic books before the company rehired him, this time as a merchandise designer. Ito is a lifelong Disney collector with an entire house of Disney merchandise – toys, art, pins, glasses, stuffed animals and more – dating back to his first piece, a Dopey Dwarf bank his father bought him when he was 5, the same day they saw “Snow White.”

Ito returned to Disney animation in 1985 to work on two new shows, “The Wuzzles” and  “Adventures of the Gummi Bears.” Fourteen years later, in 1999, Ito decided it was finally time to retire so he and his wife could relax, go on cruises and “do whatever normal, retired people do.”

But shortly after he decided to retire, Ito received a call from his childhood friend, Shig Yabu, asking if he would illustrate a children’s book Yabu had just written. Ito was reluctant at first, but Yabu was insistent until Ito finally agreed to read the manuscript. 

“And ‘Oh my gosh! This takes place in Shig’s concentration camp, Heart Mountain, in Wyoming,’” Ito said he remembers thinking. “Things [were] very similar to my Topaz experience, and what we need is a good, child-friendly book that future generations of Japanese Americans – as well as the general public – could enjoy.”

Every day for two weeks straight, Ito sat at his drawing table until the illustrations for “Hello Maggie!” were finished. Yabu and Ito shopped it around but were rejected by every publishing house they petitioned. But instead of giving up, the two decided to self-publish in 2007, with an initial 300 copies printed. Then – in a caper worthy of a classic cartoon – the two old friends drove up and down the West Coast selling copies in areas with large Asian and Japanese populations. They sold copies to Buddhist temples, Japanese museums and stores until all 300 were sold. Then they printed 500, then 1,000 more. 

But it wasn’t until Ito met Tony Tarantini, a professor of animation at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada, that “Hello Maggie!” would become a 22-minute short film. Tarantini is also a veteran animator who has worked on shows such as “The Magic School Bus,” “Beetlejuice” and “Care Bears.” He is also an avid fan and collector of Ito’s work, and when the latter saw a copy of “Hello Maggie!” on Tarantini’s shelf, he casually said that animating the book would make a great final project for the professor’s students. 

“He chuckled and I chuckled and that was the end of it,” Ito said. “Until about three years later when he contacted me and said, ‘Yes, we want to do ‘Hello Maggie!’ with our student animators.” 

In collaboration with Accademia Nemo in Florence, Italy, along with a grant from the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, production on “Hello Maggie!” began in 2020 while the world was locked down. On July 24, 2025, the film made its world premiere at the 24th annual Heart Mountain Pilgrimage, which also marked the 80th anniversary of the camp’s closing. It has since won “Best Animated Short” at the Tigertail Asian Film Festival, was a semifinalist at the Kyoto Independent Film Festival and was named an official selection at the Sacramento Asian Pacific Film and the Oakville Film festivals. 

“What’s significant about Willie is his contribution to these artistic endeavors that have become a part of Americana,” Ferrara said. “If things had turned out poorly for [his family], we would have lost so much of our country’s character and heritage. [Ito’s is] a true story about the power of immigration.” 

Wednesday’s screening at The 418 Project, 155 River St. in Santa Cruz, begins at 8 p.m, with a suggested donation of $10. To register and for more information, click here. Willie Ito will be at Atlantis Fantasyworld, 1020 Cedar St. in Santa Cruz, from 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday for a free book-signing event.

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