Exploring my family's history has been an extraordinary adventure, but it's bittersweet. I'm haunted by the Eastland Disaster, especially since all who were there are now gone. There is one individual who I have always wanted to meet —Jun Fujita, the courageous photographer who fearlessly captured the essence of that fateful day, July 24, 1915.
But fate has a way of weaving unexpected threads. Just a few weeks ago, I connected with Graham Harrison Lee, the great-nephew of Jun Fujita, through social media. And it gets better - I just had the privilege of interviewing Graham for my podcast. At that moment, it felt as if I were in the presence of Jun himself since Graham had taken on the responsibility of preserving Jun's remarkable legacy. The irony of our meeting is nothing short of miraculous—a convergence of the great-niece of an Eastland victim and the great-nephew of the Eastland photographer.
Flower in the River Podcast is about to take another detour! Get ready for an intriguing investigation into the life of Jun Fujita, the renowned photographer of the Eastland Disaster of 1915. Jun was also a poet, artist and so much more. Our guide through this journey is Jun’s great-nephew, graphic artist and writer, Graham Harrison Lee. Together, we discuss the profound impact of Jun’s artistry.
We’ll explore Jun’s early days in Chicago, where he traded a potential career in electrical engineering for the pull of the camera lens. We also delve into his unbelievable knack for avoiding danger while being on the scene at the Eastland Disaster of 1915, the 1919 race riots, and the infamous St Valentine’s Day massacre. Get a glimpse into his fascinating social circle that included heavyweights like Hemingway and Carl Sandburg--and learn about The Dill Pickle Club, one of their favorite hangouts! Also, and Jun was crazy about puns and perfecting his Baked Alaska recipe!
Discover the intriguing stories of Jun’s knife-throwing abilities, his encounter with Al Capone (!), and his long journey to marry the love of his life, Florence Carr. We’ll talk about Jun’s thwarted attempt to enlist in World War I and how his influential connections helped him navigate challenging times of World War II. This episode is a heartfelt tribute to Jun’s enduring legacy, his contributions to photojournalism and poetry, and his lasting impact on countless lives. Don't forget to tune in next week for Part 2 of Through the Lens of Jun Fujita - with Graham Lee & Natalie Zett.
Exploring my family's history has been an extraordinary adventure, but it's bittersweet. I'm haunted by the Eastland Disaster, especially since all who were there are now gone. There is one individual who I have always wanted to meet —Jun Fujita, the courageous photographer who fearlessly captured the essence of that fateful day, July 24, 1915.
But fate has a way of weaving unexpected threads. Just a few weeks ago, I connected with Graham Harrison Lee, the great-nephew of Jun Fujita, through social media. And it gets better - I just had the privilege of interviewing Graham for my podcast. At that moment, it felt as if I were in the presence of Jun himself since Graham had taken on the responsibility of preserving Jun's remarkable legacy. The irony of our meeting is nothing short of miraculous—a convergence of the great-niece of an Eastland victim and the great-nephew of the Eastland photographer.
Flower in the River Podcast is about to take another detour! Get ready for an intriguing investigation into the life of Jun Fujita, the renowned photographer of the Eastland Disaster of 1915. Jun was also a poet, artist and so much more. Our guide through this journey is Jun’s great-nephew, graphic artist and writer, Graham Harrison Lee. Together, we discuss the profound impact of Jun’s artistry.
We’ll explore Jun’s early days in Chicago, where he traded a potential career in electrical engineering for the pull of the camera lens. We also delve into his unbelievable knack for avoiding danger while being on the scene at the Eastland Disaster of 1915, the 1919 race riots, and the infamous St Valentine’s Day massacre. Get a glimpse into his fascinating social circle that included heavyweights like Hemingway and Carl Sandburg--and learn about The Dill Pickle Club, one of their favorite hangouts! Also, and Jun was crazy about puns and perfecting his Baked Alaska recipe!
Discover the intriguing stories of Jun’s knife-throwing abilities, his encounter with Al Capone (!), and his long journey to marry the love of his life, Florence Carr. We’ll talk about Jun’s thwarted attempt to enlist in World War I and how his influential connections helped him navigate challenging times of World War II. This episode is a heartfelt tribute to Jun’s enduring legacy, his contributions to photojournalism and poetry, and his lasting impact on countless lives. Don't forget to tune in next week for Part 2 of Through the Lens of Jun Fujita - with Graham Lee & Natalie Zett.
Hey there, everyone, Natalie Zett here, and do I have a treat for you and me today? Welcome to another exciting episode of Flower in the River podcast. I mean, this one is really exciting because we're about to dive into a connection that's both artistic and very personal.
Natalie Zett:
My guest today, graham Harrison Lee, is a graphic artist, writer, and I would say you're a creative torch bearer. But that's not all. He's the great nephew of the legendary photographer, poet. And is there anything this man didn't do? June Fujita? June Fujita's Eastland Disaster Photographs. You should know this. They were a bridge that I could walk across as I tried to piece together and understand my family's lost, lost history. What a mess to run into that when you're kind of on the cusp of middle age, which I was. Those photos were priceless and back when I saw the name of this amazing photographer, june Fujita, and I remember thinking there's a story here and someday I'm going to know it. And June's artistry goes beyond just capturing moments. For me, he told a story that pulled me in to my own past and I also want to quote from my book Flower in the River.
Natalie Zett:
In the final chapter of the book I have the two characters, zara and her friend Ellie, touring the Titanic exhibit, which is juxtaposed with the Eastland exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and they are in conversation about what they had just seen with the Titanic. And now they're embarking on the Eastland portion of the tour Quote. They continued looking at deck chairs, a cane and a diving suit Not as posh as the Titanic Doesn't need to be. This has something the Titanic never will. What's that? Look at the gallery of photos taken by June Fujita. He was there to photograph the picnic and ended up as the chief witness to the tragedy. End of quote from the book.
Natalie Zett:
When I was researching the Eastland initially, way back a quarter of a century ago, there was very little available about June Fujita that I could find and I heard contradictory stories as to why he was there. So I shared in the book the information I had at the time. But now we're going to get a more complete story of who this person was and what happened on the day of the Eastland disaster. So Graham is not just related to Fujita, he's the guardian of his legacy. At least that's what I'm calling you, and you can correct me the whole way through if you want.
Natalie Zett:
Graham is preserving the beauty and depth of a body of work that continues to inspire and, frankly, takes my breath away. So let's get ready, let's get rocking, and enough about. You've been listening to me talk for the last 22 weeks. Finally, we get to listen to somebody else, graham Harrison Lee, tell us about you and for the audience I know it's kind of confusing about your relationship to June Fujita. So could you explain all that bio stuff, which you've probably done before? So this is a new audience for you, I realize, and in a sense even for me, because, as of last week, we got a number of new listeners from Ireland, so you'll probably be reaching the Emerald Isle as well.
Graham Lee:
Well, this is fabulous. Thank you so much for the introduction. It is such a perfect lead-in to the story of June Fujita, and he'd be so proud to have us talking. I think, though, he was a rather humble man, so he'd probably be like enough about me let's talk about you.
Graham Lee:
So I say June is my uncle, my great uncle, but I say that in the sense that my mom was kind of like here's my relatives, they're your uncle. So June married my grandfather's sister, so technically he's my aunt's husband, but to me he's just always Uncle June. So whenever we talked about June and the family he was just Uncle June. The connection we have with June even though he died two years before I was born, it always felt like he was just a part of the family. His pictures were on the wall, his books were preserved in my grandparents' house and they kind of had this shelf all their own. You know, they kind of had the covers and the spines look different than anything else I saw as a young boy and I was like these are something special. Clearly they are, and it's in a large part to my grandfather, who is June's best friend, who is introduced by Florence to June, who helped preserve all of this, and it's thanks to him and his civil engineering mind that kept all this kind of alive for us.
Natalie Zett:
So this is your mother's father, correct?
Graham Lee:
Correct.
Natalie Zett:
And I looked at their. You know I go digging through dead people's stuff so I see that they came from. Some of them were from Canada, some were from England originally, so some were living in New York state, so it sounds like a pretty cosmopolitan group. So just for the audience's clarification, your grandfather Carr spelled C-A-R-R. He was the brother of Florence Carr, and Florence eventually became the partner and eventual wife of June Fujita, so your grandfather, carr, was a civil engineer.
Graham Lee:
Civil engineer went to Purdue University. Oh wow, kind of mirrored June in some sense, and probably why they got along so well together. And June came to Chicago. He enrolled in night courses for electrical engineering, and so I think the thought was, maybe I don't need to know English so much if I know numbers, it's a common language, we can just get through it. But they were immediately best pals.
Graham Lee:
They had common interests in nature and photography and of course Florence was the common factor there, and she was so Florence. I remember as a youngster she was always she kind of presented herself as like very upright, with good posture, and so it made you straighten up a little bit too. She was whip smart, oh my gosh, she was just brilliant. And she met June very early on. When June arrived in Chicago, florence was looking for love, they say, and so she was joining every literary society and going to literary and poetry readings, not just for the poetry but kind of looking for love. And that's where she met June and they were a couple for 25 years until they married in the 40s.
Natalie Zett:
Wow, back to June. We got to get back on Florence because I'm just fixated on Florence, because she sounds like our character. But I know June's bio, but could you explain to the audience how June got from that small village near Hiroshima to Chicago, please?
Graham Lee:
Yeah, and it's a bit of a mystery, which is kind of fun. So there's different avenues you could take. The story that often gets told is the one about the letter. And so June, as a middle schooler in Japan and falls in love with his teacher, writes her a letter. The letter is exposed to huge embarrassment and so it's like I can't talk to people again, I can't see people in my community, I better get out of here. That's not. That just can't be true. And often the jokes about it were things like he would say I walked in the shadow of my teacher and I was so embarrassed. And then my grandfather would say what did you do on a cloudy day? And then everyone just laughed because no shadow on a cloudy day.
Graham Lee:
The other story that comes up often is like a smallpox epidemic that made the parents fearful for their kids and sent them on their way Get out of town because the smallpox epidemic is here. But I think the third option and last is probably the more realistic one and a bit more mundane is that they were just looking for work. So there's, June is a middle child. He has an older brother and a younger sister. The two boys left at the same time and they went to Tokyo and June continued on from there to British Columbia and his older brother, Geetje, stayed and joined the railway business there and June never really looked back.
Graham Lee:
He went to Canada with kind of a mandate from an uncle who owned a newspaper to photograph the salmon and fishing industries. So June is in Canada with a camera, kind of on a solo adventure, if you will, in his belongings. They sent him with Japanese natsuki and their little ivory figurine. Those two have been like a little pictures of their figurines of like animals and stuff. They used to be around my grandparents' house. We'd all play with them, not knowing that they were rather valuable, but June would spend these from time to time, kind of like it was his stake. Here's what I'm taking with me to the new world here, in a way.
Natalie Zett:
How did he get from? I saw that he actually did some time in North Dakota as well. According to either the census or something, this guy made some tracks. So Chicago, chicago, there's hardly any Japanese immigrants there at that point. How did he get there, you know?
Graham Lee:
We've got a feeling that we kind of put pieces together. This is probably an aside, but it's one of those missed opportunities that as a younger boy I didn't really grill my grill my grandfather on this, he would have all that information. So I just go like, oh, I wasn't ready at that time. So three years in Canada he's a train porter, he's a servant, he's a photographer. I'm sure he's heard about Chicago, I'm sure it's a draw to him. Just probably like other cities are, so New York, chicago he'd probably maybe been through San Francisco, maybe on the way up to British Columbia perhaps. But Chicago, I think at that time, held a real particular interest. It was kind of like if you go to Chicago it's kind of a test of your metal. But North Dakota was where he transferred. So he crossed the border. It was just across the border to get to Chicago. But he loved Chicago and he never left. It was other than the kind of two little we'll call them summer houses, one in the Anadunes and the island in Rainy Lake in northern Minnesota.
Natalie Zett:
My understanding and again correct me, he was. I'm gonna jump to the Eastland disaster because June, like many of my other family members, ends up being in the wrong place at the right time. He was working for a newspaper and they had him go down there after the event had happened, after the tragedy had happened. Is that because I heard several things 25 years ago that no, he was just there to photograph the event? That's not true, I take it.
Graham Lee:
The June was close enough that he had heard and it always makes me wonder how, without the cell phones and things, you hear about things. But word must spread, word spread. He beat it down to the, to the river. When there was an incident going on, the editors at the Chicago Evening Post were scouring the city looking for June, but he was already there.
Natalie Zett:
Oh my god, I love it, I love it.
Graham Lee:
And it feels kind of like. There are several incidents like that where, like well, how in the world did June get there? You know, it makes you suspicious in a way. You're like, how was he the first journalist at the St Valentine's Day Massacre? What are the odds of like hitting these things at the right time and horrifying images of the 1919?
Natalie Zett:
riot. The riot, just the red summer. It's really quite remarkable. What's amazing about his photos? I mean, as I'm trying to put myself back into that time where I just found out about this, this little event that happened in the family, that I didn't know and the internet was new and there were no websites, and there was very little information about the Eastland Still is not that much information as far as I'm concerned, considering how many people died. However, there was nothing. And then, suddenly, a website popped up and the first thing I saw was that image of the ship on its side, and the next one was of that fireman holding that dead child, and it was to all of a sudden have nothing than this and I thought I don't have words for how it felt emotionally. And then, when I looked at the photographer's name, it was just like how was he able to and I know we probably can't answer that, but how was he able to just do his work and get that thing done? I've got something, Graham. I just dug this up literally in the bowels of the internet Stories of the day.
Natalie Zett:
This was done in 1944, in the midst of World War Two, by the way, by a writer called Emery Hutchinson quote in the interest of pure research. They think they're being funny. By the way, this is 1944, we decided to do something about the tagline on a zany anecdote in Bob Casey's recent book such interesting people that reads, one naturally wonders what became of him. He was referring to June Fujita, an engineering student at the Armour Institute who found out from a friend which end of the camera to aim with and promptly became a newspaper photographer. In the old evening post quoting, Bob Fujita may have had only one lesson, but he didn't need two. He made one routine picture of a shocked policeman carrying a little girl's body out of the Eastland. That still rates as one of the greatest newspaper photographs of all time.
Graham Lee:
That chokes, me, that chokes me up a little bit.
Natalie Zett:
I know I think today I want to do A lot of June, stuff does yeah.
Natalie Zett:
But that's how. 1944, world War Two, japan was the enemy at that point. I think there's something magic about this guy. I really do, because he was able to make himself almost invisible at scenes like the race riots at the Eastland and even, probably, at the St Valentine's Day massacre, where, in a sense, he isn't really known as well as he ought to be either, but he was able to not get killed and during especially during that 1919, he's a Japanese person. He's standing there with his other. You know, with these racial problems there was a.
Natalie Zett:
For folks who don't know, there's a really another very murky history in Chicago in 1919, clashes between white and African American people that were pretty bloody and it was pretty awful, and I I didn't know about those until I was researching June, but June again was there and there's that one image of the guy. I don't know if he's dead, but he's lying on the ground and June's there and you can see the shadow of June's hat in the photograph where the gentleman is lying on the ground, dying presumably. I think that's what I'm trying to remember. Yeah, am I right about that, or is that?
Graham Lee:
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right and it's at the time it was considered the first photo of someone being murdered you know which is just like gruesome as you can feel.
Graham Lee:
Yeah, June had. Yeah, I think there's something to the fact of, like, having the camera in front of you kind of makes you a little. June also had this. Oh my gosh, it was like a charisma about him. You know he was shorter but he, he was built and muscule. He could have been a gymnast or something or a strong man, and the way he lugged this camera around and down you know girders around buildings. I wish I had names, but it's, it's the big, it's the heavy wooden tripod, and it's the square cameras that you picture.
Natalie Zett:
Thank you. Thank you, not the iPhone. Sorry to interrupt, but I had to ask again for the people in the audience Think of all the photos of the Eastland we'd have with the iPhone.
Graham Lee:
But yes, no, this was and it's even amazing with you know, think of you know sliding a plate in taking a picnic, sliding it in. To think of all the effort it would take to maneuver around, set up, take a picture and get results.
Natalie Zett:
frankly, he got more than he got magic. And again, there was a lot of these photos that I've seen before and since. They're just almost grizzly. For grizzliness sake, that's hard to say, his are not. There's this compassion, there's this empathy, there's this thing that invites a viewer, kind of like a great painting. You become. I mean, I am part of it, I feel like I am part of it, and that river, in a sense, created all kinds of intersections, such as you and I. I mean, we're both descendants from this tragedy and here we are talking about it. But it's only because of those photos, really, that brought it home and center. And I remember sending them to my mother she just passed away, you know, earlier in 2022. And she said holy hell. She said that's what happened. He said that's what happened.
Graham Lee:
She said oh my gosh, there's nothing like a picture to really explain it. Like so many pictures. You can describe it about what happened, but seeing it is something else.
Natalie Zett:
I only knew him as the Eastland photographer, but I want to. Has he already met Florence by 1915? Or did that come later? I know they were living together in 1930, according to the census, but was that early.
Graham Lee:
They were a couple late teens. So I think by the time Eastland rolled around, I think they were a couple. They were a couple already.
Natalie Zett:
I know your family, I know he traveled in artistic circles and I suspect you, since Florence, was also a journalist. Yes, according to the census.
Graham Lee:
And obviously you have a very Social worker and a researcher.
Natalie Zett:
She wrote for the encyclopedias yeah.
Natalie Zett:
Well, little things like that, oh, we need Florence, needs her own show too. Gee whiz, and she's for folks I will post on my. I'm going to add a. I have a Carl Sandberg page on my website, but I also want to add a Jun Fujita tribute page, with your permission, please, some of these photos that I'd like you to look at and to make sure it's what you would want him, how you'd want him, to be communicated. But I thought this guy deserves his own page because and Florence too, because it sounds as if that one tribute in his Tonka poems. Jun Fujita was a poet, by the way, and an actor, and in his book of poems Jun Fujita thanked Florence Carr for her support in putting that book of poems together. A lot of men of that era didn't acknowledge their indebtedness to the women in their lives, and boy, what a class act.
Graham Lee:
Yeah, and June was not your traditional man and certainly not your traditional Japanese man. He liked to cook, for example which my understanding is that's not typical.
Graham Lee:
So he was. I've got a couple lovely pictures of him with like an apron around which is like it just doesn't look right, I'm sure, but it's quite lovely and fanciful and he's putting together a turkey for Thanksgiving or Christmas. They were known to have lovely parties, kind of impromptu, and then some formal. He loved making baked Alaska. It probably just made him chuckle because he was such a clever word guy that any word puns or stuff.
Graham Lee:
Will Durant was a favorite of his, he loved the Marx Brothers. So all these kind of interesting people intersecting in June's and Florence apartments. It's like kind of this bohemian union. You throw names out and it just sounds kind of embarrassing. But Hemingway was a purporter, they were connected there. They'd come into town and they'd be like where's Fujita?
Natalie Zett:
Let's connect, let's go down to the Dil.
Graham Lee:
Pickle Club.
Natalie Zett:
Let's talk about stuff, wait a minute. The Dil Pickle Club. What is that? I don't know. That one Is that one you got to look up?
Graham Lee:
Dil Pickle Club. It's a kind of bohemian speakeasy. What is it? High morals, step high, stoop low, because written over the door. I think that's what it is.
Natalie Zett:
Okay, listeners, before we go further, I had to look up the Dil Pickle Club. The Dil Pickle Club that was the name was located at 16 Chukar Court in Chicago Now this is from the Encyclopedia Britannica Online a bohemian club, cabaret and, from the mid-1920s onward, a speakeasy in Chicago that operated from about 1914, so that's a year before the Eastland disaster until about 1933, although sources vary. Its patrons included and I'm quoting here from the Encyclopedia Britannica hobos, prostitutes and gangsters, as well as leading scholars, literary figures and social activists, among them writers Sherwood Anderson, carl Sandberg, theodore Dreiser, ben Hect, kenneth Rexwath, upton Sinclair activists, emma Goldman and Big Bill Haywood and Clarence Darrow. The club's spirit was reflected in its orange alley door and its signage. Beneath a sign that reads Danger and two arrows pointing to the club's entrance ran the warning quote step high, stoop low, leave your dignity outside. That's the Dill Pickle Club. We'll continue.
Graham Lee:
I'll look it up. Yeah, it's a good one, in Sandberg, of course they were brand writers. There's a book that's dedicated to June, and vice versa, so they traded stuff there. They were helping each other. You know, looking back it feels like they were celebrities, and they were in a way, but it was also. They were working celebrities. When Sandberg needed a photograph of something from Abraham Lincoln for his book on Lincoln what do you call it? You called June.
Natalie Zett:
That's positively spooky these intersections are. When I wrote my book, amazon put it in the paranormal fiction, and that was not my intent at all. But I go where the fun is. I'm an open kind of gal, I'm an improv person, but it's interesting how some of this seems to be even seeping into this story. I describe it as things you really can't explain. But after the 50th coincidence, what is this? I mean, that's the other thing too, because I'm not smart enough to know everything. I don't, but I would have to say the patterns.
Natalie Zett:
I always look for patterns in genealogical histories. And your family I mean not just June, but even the car family, I mean my gosh, these folks too. They did some traveling and they contributed. June came as a stranger to this country, like we all do, like all our families do, my four grandparents from Central and Eastern Europe, and he contributed and he was actually able to lend his eyes to this part of American history. I don't know that an American born person could have done it the same way. I don't think so. There's something about being the exile.
Graham Lee:
I think you're right. I think your insight is accurate where I think someone coming to a country, maybe you've got a bit more energy to make something. I'm coming here and I've got a purpose and I'm doing something.
Natalie Zett:
Yes.
Graham Lee:
And he led a full life there was no doubt about it, and he had wonderful talent and skills and he surrounded himself with good people. He had fun, he worked hard, he had a routine, he had clear ideas about things and he brought all those together and he had a lovely influence on people. He was kind of a spiritual kind of man, some of the condolence cards from people say he was a spiritual guide for us.
Graham Lee:
He was described as sitting back at parties and not saying very much and conversation going around a long table. And then they turn and they'd say June, what do you think? How do you want to comment on that? And then he would make some kabuki Jack shirts, jeff's shirt and be like ta-da.
Natalie Zett:
Some people seem to be of the other world as well as this one, and June Fujita certainly seemed to be one of those special, unusual, rare types of people. Think of the healing he's brought to so many of us. That's what I think of.
Graham Lee:
I always think of him in terms of gratitude.
Natalie Zett:
That's a nice way to Well I mean when a family suffers these kinds of traumas and then they're overlooked. I mean certain ones of us that are born into certain levels, like the working class, like my family I always say I'm a coal miner's granddaughter. We aren't held in the high level as others. And the fact that he was there and he was so respectful of those photos of the East, lent and other photos as well, but at the morgue I guess he did those as well. So he did more than he probably realized in his lifetime and perhaps even he might have been surprised at his influence. So glad we're able to do this.
Graham Lee:
Yeah, it's been a. The journey for me has been just amazing, like meeting. You has expanded the Fujita family right, so you're part of it now. So you're, we're connected.
Natalie Zett:
That's okay. The East Lent.
Graham Lee:
Disaster Historical Society. When I started very infancy in this project, reaching out the response was we've been waiting. We knew someone would contact us. That was related to June. Now it's happened. And then it just blossomed.
Natalie Zett:
The.
Graham Lee:
Poetry Foundation. Yes, the Newberry, all these, the National Park Service all these people are just like. We love the story of June. We love what he brings in all these different touchpoints, whether it's I'm interested in crime photography, I'm interested in the East.
Natalie Zett:
Lent.
Graham Lee:
I'm interested in early color wildflower photography. Or is it tahta and poems? My gosh, it's just all this entry points into a single person.
Natalie Zett:
That went, the story about the knife throwing and alcapone. Is that true?
Graham Lee:
As true as family stories are right, right. So June was good with a knife. So it's been told that he could take a knife and flip it into a tree, which can see seeing some of his pictures in the woods he was a naturalist and a woodsy guy. His pictures of camping he cut down trees to make the bed, you know, and put bows and stuff over it. He fabricated tables out of stuff and you're like, okay, just stop it, june, we get it.
Graham Lee:
So he's good with a knife. He's showing off. It starts to spread. People are aware of it. On a Sunday down Michigan Avenue, a black car pulls up alongside of them. June's walking down the street, back car rolls down. Al Capone looks out. They know each other right Because it's the newsmakers and the news recorders.
Graham Lee:
They've got this dance they do together. So he looks over at June and says I hear you're good with a knife. We could use a guy like you. And June says I'm better with a camera. Capone was to have to have said we'd nicknamed you a chop suey.
Natalie Zett:
Oh, no, oh, no yeah.
Graham Lee:
So June declines, the car rolls away. June goes back to Florence and says I think I was just asked to join the gang and then, you know, with like the Capone gang he did not, he did not.
Natalie Zett:
Yes, that was just an excellent story. Florence and he. I see them as partners, and I read too. If you could explain to the audience too. This happened in my family, so I know this is true for certain people. If you married, if you were born in the United States and you married a person who was from another country, you could lose your citizenship. Is that the reason that they did not marry? I read that. Or did they wait until he became naturalized?
Graham Lee:
It's not super clear why they did marry. I think that's a very plausible answer I think that could be why there was certainly some family talk about. Well, this is just embarrassing. Now you guys have been together for 25, why?
Natalie Zett:
didn't you get married? You get married yeah.
Graham Lee:
In 1940, when they get married, it feels like that also is a way to just kind of cement his love of the United States. It'd be like I've married into the United States. Is that enough proof that I am not a?
Natalie Zett:
spy. Yeah, they wanted to enlist.
Graham Lee:
I read which didn't really help. Yeah, both World War I and II. He tried to enlist and was turned down. But there were efforts to be like how can I be of service, what can I do? I can't read Japanese very well but I can give you what I can. But it didn't stop the wheels from turning so early on World War I, pre-fbi stuff he was being investigated, people watching his whereabouts and recording the kind of language you would imagine.
Graham Lee:
And so, antard, he's taking pictures. Nope, it's just he's taking pictures of news stuff. And then in World War II he does get his assets frozen. Everything looks kind of severe here. He's labeled an enemy alien and there's a lot of drama.
Graham Lee:
It all reads like an episode on TV of like a one day tube making a call they're coming by. Then he's got a connection in the. Is it the State Department? I think so. Yeah, his former editor, mike Strauss out of the Chicago Evening Post was working for the government and could help vouch for June's integrity and I'm sure that helped.
Natalie Zett:
And good friends Al Capone and Michael Strauss. Yeah, that's. You need good friends if you're going to do this.
Graham Lee:
Make friends all the way along, because you never know when you'll need them.
Natalie Zett:
Exactly. And then June knew that and again, for a person who came to this country with not probably knowing a whole lot of English, where he ended up, that was incredible. That was another I'm sure he did. He go to, I know he went to school, obviously. He went to high school and technical college became. That became.
Graham Lee:
Armor Institute. Yeah, I get it.
Natalie Zett:
Okay. So he had education, but the fact that he was able to learn the nuances of the language I mean, I tried to learn Japanese at one point. It's really difficult, so that's off to him.
Graham Lee:
Yeah, it does. It does feel mind boggling that he could make these delicate poems right.
Natalie Zett:
Beautiful, beautiful poems.
Graham Lee:
The that are just imbued with all this mood, as he wanted to create the mood for these poems and they're so sparse. But it obviously takes a command of the language to make it work. So yeah it is quite miraculous and the story goes is that it was kind of done on a dare.
Graham Lee:
So he would have had a party or something. One of the literary critics or something was showing something in June's like. This is not poem, this is not. This is. You're taking way too many words to describe something. Give me a minute. Yeah, that's that. Set him off on the on the Tonkou road.
Natalie Zett:
Okay, so somebody threw down the gauntlet, the wordy gauntlet, and he just said we're going to make it different and I love, I love his sparseness. He says very much with very little.
Graham Lee:
He's got a quote about like describe. See if I can get this right. It's like the still describing the stillness of the mountains and the roar of fall and to capture those with words.
Natalie Zett:
So whoa the mood. Did he teach poetry at all to students? Or I know he did some lecturing. I saw you, so yeah.
Graham Lee:
I know that they were saying notes. There's some photography lectures that were that he was hosting, which I would love to see a transcript of or anything, but all I all I have are a few titles of them, which, something it's like is, is newspaper photography. Art, I think, was one of them. I'm always happy to share stories because you never know what someone else knows, and people are so happy to share when we, when we talk about these stories, and then the internet just kind of keeps growing.
Graham Lee:
There's more and more that just gets digitized every day, so I just keep looking back at my same sources of like what is archive org got in there?
Natalie Zett:
I want to get back to his poems, though. He said he called himself. Exile was the word I believe he used in the Tonka poem Paul.
Graham Lee:
Holmes in an exile.
Natalie Zett:
Thank you, did he feel?
Graham Lee:
Paul Holmes in an exile.
Natalie Zett:
That he was. I mean, I think he, I know he loved this country, he loved being here, he loved everything. But where does the exile come from, do you think?
Graham Lee:
It's one of the top 10 questions. So you get the nail in the head and there's no clear answer. But I love everybody's thoughts about it. So if I'm in a crowd, I've been asked sometimes giving a presentation, and then people have other ideas. I'm like I love that idea. Maybe that's it. There's some thought that, yeah, maybe he feels exiled from Japan but, I don't think. It doesn't feel like that's how he would see himself. He was so self-assured, so well-dressed and presented himself like a model out of Amber Crombian Fitch. I don't know.
Natalie Zett:
Exactly.
Graham Lee:
So I feel like there might be something more to the poems themselves. Maybe they are exiled in some sense.
Natalie Zett:
I don't know.
Graham Lee:
Maybe your listeners will have some theories.
Natalie Zett:
I hope. Yeah, it's interesting because I also think about the persona that you just described that he crafted for himself the well-built, attractive, confident. Did he really feel that on the inside? I don't know, but it didn't matter, because of what he constructed for himself was actually between the camera and the persona. It provided a measure of safety and perhaps place of retreat for him too to be, so he could be in his own skin in a country. That can be kind of funny about differences.
Graham Lee:
And he was such a word smith that that word is so intentional. There's no doubt about it, and maybe part of his fun is that he put a word in there that we're not totally going to get. It's like the ending of a movie where you're left like what do you think happened? What do you think happened? Yeah, I don't know.
Natalie Zett:
There's a beauty too. There never are answers, Are there? There are just really good questions that have to come up about somebody like this and through the questioning.
Natalie Zett:
I think that's where a lot of the person is revealed because even if we knew, I like asking the questions and the mystery he's speaking to the past as well as the future and for our audience. This interview is quite extensive, so I'm going to break it into two parts. We'll play the next part next week. So this is the end of part one, and I've stopped it at an interesting place, and we will continue with part two next week.
Natalie Zett:
Thank you for joining us for this very special Flower in the River podcast, with Graham Harrison Lee discussing his great uncle, the great June Fujita. Take it easy.