1951 Hokubei Mainichi Year Book [cover title]

[San Francisco]: Hokubei Mainichi, 1950. Fair.. 770pp. Original light gray wrappers printed in blue. Front cover creased, minor dust soiling, light edge wear. Lacking page 743-44, six other leaves partially defective. An extensive directory of the Japanese-American community primarily in California but also in twenty-two other states, Canada, and Japan at the outset of the Eisenhower years. The work was published by the Hokubei Mainichi newspaper based in San Francisco, originally as a Buddhist alternative to the Nichi Bei Times. The directory lists names, addresses, and often phone numbers for over 20,000 Japanese Americans, their businesses, schools, (truncated) churches, and more. The listings are book-ended and interspersed with many dozens of advertisements for goods and services aimed at the Japanese-American community in various states. The present copy, though wounded, is priced accordingly, and remains an important source of vital information to the Japanese-American community in the mid-20th century, mainly in California, but also in states from Arizona to Illinois, New York, Texas, and Wyoming, among others. OCLC lists ten locations for various editions of this directory in a serial record, though only two are explicitly enumerated as the 1951 edition, one at UCLA and another at the Library of Congress; the latter copy is also defective, lacking its cover. (Inventory #: 2356)