The New Japanese American News 1949 Year Book [cover title]

Los Angeles, 1949. About very good.. [220],34,[16],934,[26],20pp., plus numerous additional interleaved advertisements on colored paper. Original red cloth, gilt printed. Covers rubbed, some wear and soiling. Minor soiling to contents. Scarce postwar directory for Japanese emigrants living across the Americas. The focus is California and the American West, but there are also dedicated sections for New York, Chicago, Canadian provinces, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina. The directory was published in 1949 by the Los Angeles Japanese newspaper Shin Nichibei but printed in "occupied Japan," according to the colophon information. The volume contains a massive, 220-page photographic advertising section for Japanese-owned businesses across the West, mostly in California, but with many in Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Hawaii, and the Pacific Northwest. These advertisements include portraits of the proprietors and their families, their places of business, and employees at work. Further printed and pictorial advertisements are scattered liberally throughout the publication. This principal text contains thousands of bilingual listings for Japanese residents, and would have been a valuable resource for immigrants attempting to reconnect after the displacements, internment and otherwise, caused by the war. The present issue of this directory is amongst the earliest and scarcest published by Shin Nichibei, and contains one of the most substantial photographic sections; across several OCLC records we locate three institutional copies, at Washington, Oregon, and the Library of Congress.