How objects speak
4. Two Class Photographs of Melba Yonemura
Date: 1921 and 1926
Medium: Black and white photograph
Credit Line: Gift of Walter W. Matsuura
Object ID: 2003.119.2 and .3
These two photographs are from the personal collection of Melba Yonemura, the daughter of an Issei man and German-American woman. The 1921 class picture from Holy Cross Junior High was taken shortly before Melba and her family moved from Chicago to California. Five years latter, the Jefferson High School class panorama shows the diversity of her public school in Los Angeles in contrast to her parochial school in Chicago. These photographs have a different, personal meaning to Melba's son, Walter, than they might for a researcher assessing diversity among pre-World War II Japanese Americans.