Sunao Imoto

Photo album titled "Abroad with My Camera and Me" of family friend Sunao Imoto's travels to Japan via San Francisco and Hawaii onboard the Kamakura Maru with Sumi Sakai, departing April 8, 1940. Snapshots document shipboard activities, a lengthy stay of study in Tokyo, and tourist and family visits to Kyoto, rural Southern Japan, and Manchukuo (Manchuria); Imoto's travels around Japan appear to be without Sumi Sakai. Album was created as a gift to Walter and Galetta Van Valkenburgh in December 1941 and contains extensive captions and commentary, including observations on the lives of Japanese women, both urban and rural. Several snapshots depict Imoto's return trip onboard the Montevideo Maru with its mostly European refugee passengers, arriving in Los Angeles on June 11, 1941.

Sumi Sakai photo album, 1920s to 1941, also includes snapshots of the same journey to Japan, including Kamakura Maru shipboard images.

Also present is a loose War Relocation Authority publicity photo of Sunao Imoto working as a secretary for poet Carl Sandburg following her release from the Poston War Relocation Center, dated May 1944.