13th ANNUAL W.Y.B.L. CONVENTION MARCH 25 26 27 1955 caption title
1955WRCAM56693Oakland Ca.: Utsumi Studio 1955. Panoramic silver gelatin photograph 8 x 30 1/4 inches. Minor edge wear a few soft creases mild surface soiling. Very good plus. An appealing panoramic photograph featuring the attendees of the 1955 conference of the Western Young Buddhist League. The photograph captures a few hundred finely- dressed Japanese-American men and women posed in a courtyard in Oakland California. Various delegates to the conference hold handwritten signs indicating their home cities and regional organizations which include Marysville Palo Alto San Mateo San Francisco Fresno Oakland Sacramento Delta Pasadena and numerous other smaller California cities and locales. There are also banners for attendees from the Stockton Chapter of the Y.B.A. the Coast District of the Young Buddhist Association and the Central California Young Buddhist Association. The elders of the organization sit in chairs in front of the young Bussei. Interestingly this photograph was taken by Oakland photographer Kinji Utsumi a photographer in the Bay Area both before and after World War II. Utsumi bought his photo studio in 1941 but was forced to close at the outset of the Japanese-American internment period. He then became one of the official photographers at the Topaz internment camp in Utah; he is mentioned in the RAMBLINGS yearbooks for Topaz High School during the internment period. After the war Utsumi returned to Franklin Street in Oakland and opened another photographic studio. A rare image of a large organization of young Japanese-American Buddhists in California in the middle of the Eisenhower years with no copies reported in OCLC. Utsumi Studio unknown books
William Reese Company · États-Unis1 250,00 $US≈ 1 057,63 €
