Archive on Japanese-Americans, from Agricultural Labor and Nursing to Internment Camps: A 20th Century Retrospective

Japanese American photo archive from the 1910s -1990s, showing the Japanese-American identity develop over the course of the 20th century. Archive of 9 black and white silver gelatin press photos measuring between 6" x 8" and 8" x 10". The most powerful photo is a 1943 photo shows a young Japanese-American stitching an American flag while in Relocation camp. The three earliest photos predate WWII and were taken from 1918 until the 1930s. The earliest shot depicts three well-dressed Japanese immigrants, two men and a woman, in Los Angeles in 1918 raising their drinks to the camera. A 1931 photo shows two young Japanese girls in traditional dress from a (truncated) family of gardeners who had participated in the "phenomenal success in development of the world's chysanthemum center at Redwood City, Calif." as per caption on verso. Many Japanese-Americans worked in agriculture and horticulture, and by 1931 demonstrated their prowess in cultivation by putting on a "Kiku Matsuri", or chysanthemum festival, in Redwood City. The last pre-WWII photo depicts a group of three Japanese men and two women who were nurses in the 1930's in the US. These men are possibly doctors, dressed in three-piece suits and are sat in front of their stately Packard sedan, a symbol of their lifestyle and success in America. After the onset of WWII, Japanese-American identity fundamentally changed from a rapidly assimilating group to being perceived as a potential Fifth Column. This lot of photos shifts to the next stage of Japanese-American history: internment, dislocation, and tests of loyalty to a distrustful country. A 1943 photo shows a young Nisei woman, as per the caption on verso, Mrs. Yoshiye Abe, who is stitching an American flag at a Denver flag factory, with the hopes of it being "carried into Tokio." Abe was uprooted from Fresno, Ca. to the Santa Anita Assembly Center and later relocated to Denver. She is emblematic of a Japanese-American spirit which, while proud of their origin, was fundamentally committed to the US despite being uprooted and mistreated. Another press photo dating from February 1942 shows the rudimentary dwellings, former horse stables, converted to house displaced Japanese Americans forcing them into a new reality far from the Packard lifestyle. Also includes 3 photos that follow the stories of Japanese Americans who grew up for a time in these relocation camps, the former incarcerated men are now in older age. The 3 men who spent childhood years in the camp are identified in captions: Allen Hida, Dr. Lawrence Yatsu, and Yoshimi Yamamoto. In the photos Hida shares photographs from the internment camps days, Yatsu is now as an mature man in a lab coat surrounded by his scientific equipment (caption on verso reda "This is a story about Japanese-Americans who were sent to camps during World War II.", and Yamamoto looks on kindly at the camera, with caption on verso"Yoshimi Yamamoto Japanese American with family was put in a American Concentration Camp in WWII". These photos provide a glimpse into the experience of Japanese-Americans throughout the 20th century. In very good condition overall. (Inventory #: 20695)