[Japanese Americana]: [Photography]:

[Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album Documenting the Personal and Academic Life of a Young Japanese American Woman and Her Family in Japan and California].

[Various locations, mostly Japan, but also California and Hawaii: 1931-1947]. [24] leaves, illustrated with 206 mounted black-and-white or sepia-toned photographs of varying sizes, most with manuscript captions in Japanese. Quarto. Contemporary maroon photograph album with floral design and "Photo Album" printed on front cover. Spine chipped, both boards and spine detached, minor rubbing to boards. Photographs generall well preserved. Good. Item #4328

A well-annotated vernacular photograph album documenting the life, schooling, and early work career of a young woman in the Hamamoto family (the only daughter and here referred to simply as "Hamomoto-san") along with significant images of her family in California in the 1930s. Hamamoto's family seem to have been early immigrants to the Los Angeles area, particularly Pacoima, where they ran a meat market and grocery store in 1934. Seven photographs in a two-page spread show the Hamomotos in Pacoima, including four of their store and three of the Hamomotos posed at Pacoima Elementary School; one of the latter images shows the compiler posed with three other students of different ethnicities at the school.

The present album includes numerous photos of Hamomoto, along with portratis of her parents, brothers, various friends, and so forth. Hamamoto's family apparently relocated back to Japan in the mid-1930s, stopping in Hawaii along the way, where a photo of the family is captioned, "On the way back to Japan." She evidently stayed in Japan thereafter, likely so that she could attend school in Hiroshima. Once Hamamoto resettled in Hiroshima, she enrolled in a Buddhist-affiliated private high school for girls, Shintoku Higher School for Girls, where she graduated in 1942. Much of the latter half of the present album contains school class photos, groups shots of students engaging in various ceremonies and school projects, individual portraits of her classmates (with many identified), and other scenes at school and at reunions afterwards. Hamomoto's school was later destroyed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, killing almost 400 students and teachers.

The present album also documents at least one other back-and-forth move between the United States and Japan within the Hamomoto family. In 1940, the compiler's brother Hiroshi went to the U.S. and returned in 1941 where he entered a major institute focusing on broadcast technology. Following high school, Hamomoto worked for Mitsui Bussan for a while; one image here is captioned, "During the time I worked at Mitsui & Co., 1944. Taken on the roof." Mitsui Bussan is still a major trading company in Japan that deals in commodities. Hamomoto may have also worked for American authorities during the Occupation of Japan following World War II, evidenced by a couple of images here showing her posed outside an R.T.O. office in 1947. The American military established the Railroad Transportation Office in occupied Japan in order to manage military and personnel travel on the Japanese railway system; these offices were set up at several major Japanese train stations.

This album is a nice example of a primary source reflecting the fluid interplay within the Japanese and Japanese-American communities with regard to life in Japan versus the United States before World War II. There were often tensions within Japanese and Japanese-American families related to which country provided better opportunities for their families, especially the younger generations. The present album is one example when the family apparently decided against life in America and returned to the mother country, specifically to Hiroshima. The compiler of the album survived the war, however, and may have even worked with American occupiers, likely due to some facility with the English language, first learned long before, during childhood in California.

Price: $1,750