PBA Galleries

Various snapshot sizes and varying condition. Mostly undated except for the earliest, taken in Los Angeles, Santa Fe Springs and  the resort of White Point Hot Spring between 1922 and 1925. 

An intriguing collection of candid photography of a California Japanese-American family stretching over four decades.

Several of the early photos are in an oil field (“E.P.C. Oil Well No. 1”). The father may have worked as an oil field “wildcatter” after immigrating to the US, via Hawaii, during World War I. But the family soon settled into farming or nursery labor; many of the pictures, both before and after the War, show agricultural work.

There are no wartime photos, though we surmise that the father died before Pearl Harbor and the mother and her son and three daughters were interned at the Poston Camp in Colorado. One 1947 photo of two young men who are named – both of whom served in the US Army (including the famed 442nd) - were pictured doing agricultural work in Arizona, possibly where their families were interned. A small group of pictures, some in color, were taken later, probably in the late 1950s or early 60s.