Coming out of an experience of war in which families had been torn apart, their constitutional rights had been violated, and Japanese Americans had been conflated in the popular press with the enemy, how was photography a way that Japanese Americans created a sense of home, belonging, and familial stability? As Norman Mineta put it: “Did we, in fact, have a future in America? And after all that had happened to us, to society, to the world, could we return to the places we considered home?” After Numata made Chicago home, he began to make a wide range of photographs from portraits and community events to cityscapes that demonstrate the significance that photographs play in everyday acts of self-representation. Through the vernacular photograph Numata reclaimed a piece of the rights of citizenship that had been stripped from him during the war.
What brought Numata to Chicago, Illinois? Japanese Americans were mostly forbidden from returning to their West Coast homes until January 1945. While returning to Los Angeles was a possibility in 1945, it may well be that Numata wanted to start anew far from his wife and the geography that had anchored their lives together just prior to the war. The War Relocation Authority was charged not just with administering the camps, the federal agency was also tasked with coming up with a plan for the resettlement of Japanese Americans as they obtained leave clearance. Working to “scatter Japanese Americans as much as possible and encourage them to lose strong ethnic ties,” the WRA played a significant factor in the development of newer Japanese American communities, like the one in Chicago. According to historian Greg Robinson, “the case of the Japanese Americans demonstrates the persistence of the dubious belief that destruction of ethnic communities will ensure assimilation and social harmony.” Dispersal was seen as a solution to preventing ethnic enclaves, and in doing so creating a situation in which Japanese Americans were forced to assimilate with different ethnicities.
The WRA set up its first resettlement office in Chicago. According to a Chicago area resettlement official, the goal was “the complete incorporation or absorption into our every community social activity where only the difference in physical features are noticeable.” A letter from the supervisor of the Chicago relocation office to the head of the employment division for the WRA, explained the chief barrier to such a goal: “If it were not for the housing situation which remains acute in Chicago and probably always will, we should be tempted to expand this program very much. The jobs are here and we know we can place most people within a short time after their arrival but the housing facilities are so limited, we must move rather more slowly than we would like.” Housing continued to be a central obstacle to Japanese Americans newly arriving in Chicago. In addition to housing, the WRA relocation office supervisor complained of police arrests for the possession of items that had been contraband in camp, including radios and cameras, and “other somewhat petty reasons” as another barrier for Japanese Americans.
Arriving alone in the Fall of 1945 Numata became just one of the roughly 20,000 Japanese Americans who relocated to Chicago during the war. With a meager population of fewer than 400 before World War II, Japanese Americans had not been well represented in the Chicago area. (LINK TO: Image 3.1) The wave of Japanese Americans directed to resettle in Chicago by the WRA encountered a highly segregated city, with a growing demand in industrial jobs but race-based restrictions barring them from skilled jobs and housing.
World War II led to an uptick in black employment in industrial centers such as Chicago, but the labor opportunities for African-American workers were limited in comparison to their white counterparts. Excluded from most skilled labor positions, African Americans worked in unskilled positions in Chicago’s factories. While they made up a large number of the workforce, very few (if any at all) held managerial positions. Similarly, the housing market in Chicago was extremely segregated. Racist housing practices were already well entrenched at the time, and black Chicagoans were more often than not forced into less developed neighborhoods, concentrating poverty and limiting access to resources. As the Japanese American population of Chicago grew during the mid 1940s, these new Chicagoans occupied what historian Charlotte Brooks terms the “in-between position in the city’s racial hierarchy.”
Overall, the combination of racist housing market practices, and WRA regulation deterred any true Japanese American neighborhood from developing. The most prominent areas of Japanese American resettlement occurred in the Near North Side, at the intersection of Division and Clarke, as well as the “Oakland/Kenwood and Woodlawn areas of Hyde Park near the University of Chicago.” (LINK TO: Images 3.2-3.5) However, this did not prevent the development of a vibrant Japanese American community in post-war Chicago.
This “in-between” position greatly influenced how the Japanese American community developed in Chicago during the 1940s. For the most part, Japanese Americans were more widely accepted as coworkers and neighbors by both black and white Chicagoans. As fellow minorities, many African Americans saw Japanese Chicagoans as allies in their fight for civil rights. Cooperation between black and Japanese American organizations was not at all uncommon at this time, and represents an alliance created to combat discriminatory practices in housing and the workplace.
As “alternatives” to African Americans, whites saw Japanese Americans as “model” citizens and coworkers. This gave Japanese Americans access to some advantages not available to Chicago’s black population, particularly in the workforce. While somewhat limited, the new Japanese American migrants mostly succeeded at finding work in Chicago. From factory worker to chick-sexer, employment opportunities were generally available. (LINK TO: Images 3.6-3.7) [BOX 3 Chick Sexer?] Again, the “in-between” status allowed them certain advantages not readily available to black workers in Chicago. White workers oftentimes saw them as better coworkers than African Americans, and embraced them as “model” examples of how minorities should act, which, at times, led to tension between Japanese American and black workers.
This type of inclusion, however, was not present in the housing market. Similar to African Americans, Japanese Americans faced housing discrimination at every turn. Landlords were unwilling to rent to Japanese Americans in certain parts of the city, and suburban housing was mostly restricted to them until well into the 1950s. Due to these practices, Japanese Americans ended up living in locations throughout Chicago that for the most part had been predominantly African-American neighborhoods in the earlier decades of the twentieth century. (LINK TO: 3.8) Not only were Japanese American housing options restricted through racist market practices, but through government regulation.
Despite the many hurdles faced as a result of WRA policies and Chicago’s racial climate, Japanese Americans managed to create a place to call their own in this new setting. Numata’s photographs focus on the creation of clubs and other social networks that also reveal the shift in the assimilationist directives of the WRA’s “ethnic dispersal program.” Starting roughly in 1948, Numata began to photograph the lives of Japanese Americans in Chicago. From local events and gatherings (LINK TO: Images 3.9-3.22), to family portraits, to business promotions Numata’s camera captured a growing and vibrant Japanese American community. This increase in Numata’s photographic activity coincided with his relationship with Mary Chiyoko Muramoto (they were married on September 24, 1950 at the Chicago Buddhist Church), whose father owned his own photography studio in Colorado. (LINK TO: Image 3.23)
Numata’s photographs depict the roles that community organizations, religion, and small businesses played in the creation of a cohesive community identity. Photographs of employees smiling and lined up behind a dry cleaner counter, or women posing in their beauty shop are all part of Numata’s contributions to the Chicago Japanese American Year Book, which recorded local businesses in a directory. Another image of what looks like members of a family, who are staffing the Rainbow Foods store, emphasizes shelves loaded with the post-war abundance of highly processed foods. Wonder bread, corn flakes, and Quaker oats dominate shelves along with row after row of canned goods. Poster-sized advertisements for Nescafe and cereal hang from the ceiling. The staff is lined up behind the bread shelves, and they smile directly at the camera. The store presents a stark contrast with the rations and commissary that this family would have experienced during the war. (LINK TO: 3.20) Although Numata himself was employed as a bookkeeper, some of his photographs, like Rainbow Foods, which were used in the Year Book, imply a side job in commercial photography.
As early as 1946, a strong Japanese American community was developing in Chicago. A significant reason for this was the existence of already influential Japanese American community organizations in Chicago. The influx of Nisei from the incarceration camps only strengthened these organizations and led to increased development of various social groups such as the Shin-yu-kai (friendship club) and the All Girls Club that allowed Japanese Americans to stay connected across Chicago. (LINK TO: Images 3.24-3.26) Possibly the most prominent of these groups were religious organizations such as the Chicago Buddhist Church, of which Numata was a member. Working with the same WRA that encouraged dispersal, Buddhist churches, and other organizations in the Chicago area tried to create a welcoming environment for the incoming Japanese Americans. (LINK TO: Images 3.27-3.36) Of course, this would not have been as successful without a large group of Nisei determined to maintain cultural ties and practices in a new city. Social groups affiliated with church groups organized events such as carnivals, dances, and picnics for Chicago’s Japanese American community. It is here where Numata’s contribution to our understanding of Japanese American life in post-war Chicago is most significant.
The photographs show Japanese Americans in the act of creating and building community through meaningful social activity. Numata frames the aproned women of the Buddhist Church who stand behind the counter offering plates of noodles and sushi at the carnival just below center so he can include the crepe paper decorations hanging from the ceiling within his frame. (LINK TO: 3.27) The women themselves are lined up for the shot and some are eating noodles, snow cones, and one is drinking bottled Coca Cola. Together they assert a claim to a group identity predicated on shared cultural practices and shared beliefs. In another photograph, a group of eight Nisei/Kibei and one young white man smile broadly as they pose during the Chicago Buddhist Church picnic. It’s one of the few instances in Numata’s photographs that depicts social interaction between Japanese Americans and white Americans. Numata is crouching behind a friend with his hands on his shoulders, and Mary who would become Jim’s wife in less than a year is sitting on the other side of the blanket. (LINK TO: 3.28) Another photograph of a Shin-yu-kai event depicts fun at the beach. One man and woman are playing a game that has put them in intimate proximity. He passes a lifesaver from his mouth to hers as others in bathing suits and rolled up pants look on amused. [LINK to 3.25]
Numata continued to photograph his experiences and those of his fellow Chicagoans until his death in 1997. His extensive collection depicts a variety of events throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Sprinkled throughout the Mary and James Numata Collection at the JASC are landscapes of Chicago taken by Numata all over the city. These photographs reveal an imagemaker not just interested in producing images for business directories, but a man deeply interested in photography for its aesthetic value. From striking images of Chicago’s skyline, to carefully framed shots of wildlife and landmarks, Numata reveals his attention to detail. (LINK TO: Images 3.37- 3.42) Through these images Numata demonstrated a love for the architecture and landscape of the city of Chicago, using photography to explore light, shadow, and pattern—very much in keeping with mid-century art photography. In these cityscapes, Numata is more like a flaneur, using his camera to observe the nuances of the city and in a sense break down the invisible barriers that structural racism had erected, and that had been all too visible to Numata during his wartime confinement.
In his self-portrait, Numata reveals a desire to construct himself in this new urban space as an artist. (LINK TO: Image 3.43) Surrounded by books in Japanese and English, he sits at his desk with five images displayed around him. Framed on the wall is a Japanese print, two of Numata’s own photographs are propped against the wall on top of the bookshelf, and two other images are casually tacked onto the shelf’s wood slats. One image, which appears to be torn from a magazine depicts a woman’s fishnet stocking clad legs, and the other a classical Indian dancer posing with arms overhead. In addition to his Japanese patrimony placed just above his own work, he includes a nod to fashion and dance in his photographic construction of self. Perhaps most importantly, strapped at his hip, Numata brandishes his camera in the self-portrait, a nod to the painterly conceit of including palette and brush, he includes his chosen medium as he looks with a serious expression directly into the lens of the camera that is doing the actual representational work. While it may be impossible to know who laid eyes on Numata’s photographs while he was still alive, it is clear that Numata, although an amateur, fashioned himself into a committed photographer.