Interwar and Post-War Issei and Nisei Family Networks Archive of 100 Photographs Documenting Life Across Hawaii, California, and Japan, circa 1920s-1950s

Japanese American

Photograph

Japanese American family photograph album documenting how Issei and Nisei kinship, self-presentation, and community life operated across a transpacific network linking Honolulu, Waikiki, mainland California, and Japan from the interwar decades through the years following World War II. The album preserves continuity across a period when Japanese communities in the United States were subjected to war, state suspicion, forced removal on the mainland, and severe disruption of ties with Japan. The broad span of this photo album showcases what endured around that rupture through marriage, childrearing, social clubs, education, and the maintenance of family identity across several generations and several Pacific locations.

Inter and postwar Japanese American family photograph album. Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii; Los Angeles, California; and Japan. Circa 1927 to the postwar period. Album containing approximately 100 original photographs, the majority black and white or sepia with a few color photographs, mounted on cardstock plastic covered leaves in a red album. Album measures 10.5" x 13". Photographs range from 8" x 13" to 2" x 2", with numerous studio markings and occasional handwritten captions. The compiler is likely a member of the Yamamoto family, with two captions identifying two of the members. A group photograph labeled “The Nine Star Club / Pres. Russel K. Yamamoto / org. 1929 taken 7/30,” documents a young men's social or fraternal association, and a smaller snapshot shows an older man in overalls and sandals is captioned “Yamamoto Father." The largest photo dated 9-21-1927 and marked Honolulu, Hawaii, shows a coed class wearing leis, likely graduating from tailoring school. A large porch group portrait of young women, some holding children, bearing the mark “Sato Photo Shop / Phone 3036 / Honolulu.” Other studio photographs include a seated bride in formal Japanese ceremonial wedding attire beside her husband in a suit, later family portraits of the same couple and their children in Western clothing, infant and toddler portraits, and multigenerational groupings. Several photographs bear studio identifications including “Nakako Studio / Los Angeles” and a Waikiki, Oahu studio mark, while smaller snapshots show ordinary family activity outdoors, at beaches, in yards, on porches, and in neighborhood commercial spaces.
Prewar images establish the social world Japanese immigrants and their American-born children had already built in Hawaii and on the mainland through schools, clubs, studios, and household rituals; postwar photographs show that these networks persisted after wartime disruption and anti-Japanese hostility had altered daily life across the Pacific. Some edge wear, curling, silvering, toning, and occasional chipping or corner loss to individual photographs; binding sound with expected age wear. Overall good condition. The transnational imagery in Honolulu, Los Angeles, and photographs sent from relatives in Japan record how Japanese American identity was sustained through image exchange, ceremonial portraiture, and intergenerational memory before and after the war.

Item #23157

Price: $1,750.00