Item No: #307895 Year Book and Directory, 1939–1940 / Kamai nenkan. Kashu Mainichi.
Year Book and Directory, 1939–1940 / Kamai nenkan
Year Book and Directory, 1939–1940 / Kamai nenkan
Year Book and Directory, 1939–1940 / Kamai nenkan
Year Book and Directory, 1939–1940 / Kamai nenkan

Japanese American Directory Published Just Before the Internment

Year Book and Directory, 1939–1940 / Kamai nenkan

Notes: A directory of Japanese Americans, mostly in California, with entries in thirteen other states, Mexico, Japan, China, and Manchuria. There is also a business directory for Los Angeles, an extensive photographic section with images of Japanese American residents, businesses, and cultural institutions. The directory section includes multiple entries for many addresses (probably denoting husband, wife, and adult children), including the name in Japanese and Roman characters, the person's address and phone number. The place of origin (America for native born residents and prefectures for those born in Japan) is also given in Japanese.

In a remarkable example of typesetting, the kanji is set vertically, as is traditional while the Roman lettering is set horizontally on the same line.

This is one of the last directories published for the Japanese American community before most of the people in this book were relocated to internment camps during World War Two.

Kashu Mainichi was a bilingual Japanese-English newspaper founded by Fujii Sei in 1931. During the Second World War, he was interned as an enemy alien, securing release only in 1946. After the war, he successfully challenged California's 1913 alien land law, which prohibited Japanese immigrants from owning land. In Fujii v. California, he convinced the California Supreme Court to overturn decades of legal precedents, ending forty years of prohibitions on property ownership and other racially motivated restrictions.

[4], [68 black-and-white plates], 28, x, 616 pages.

OCLC: 37651252, 54481146, 1021016583

Edition + Condition: A very good to near fine copy in stiff cloth covers.

Publication: Los Angeles: Kashu Mainichi Shinbunsha / Japan-California Daily News, 1940.

Item No: #307895

Sold