Nagasawa’s long engagement with the people and places of the Ogasawara Islands and his current fascination with its secret nuclear history began in 2007 when leafing through a travel magazine. In it he read about a community of “Western Islanders” (as they are often called) in the Islands who trace their heritage to 19th and early 20th-century pioneering settlers originating from outside of Japan. These Islanders are descendants of the first permanent inhabitants of (and later arrivals to) the archipelago in modern times who migrated mainly from the Pacific U.S. and Europe. The first group sailed from Honolulu in 1830 to establish a whaling colony in the then-uninhabited islands.

The Ogasawara Islands also known in Western languages as the Bonin Islands a stunning group of over 30 islands located about 1000 kilometers south of Tokyo. The subtropical archipelago’s natural beauty has attracted many visitors from Japan and all over the world to its shores and in 2011 it was designated a natural World Heritage Site by UNESCO - one of only four in Japan - in recognition of its unique and fragile but well-managed environment. Its wealth of ecosystems is home to many endangered flora and fauna including the Bonin Flying Fox (a fruit bat) and many endemic birds and plants. The seas surrounding the archipelago are teeming with numerous species of coral fish whales and other aquatic life.

As beautifully evidenced by his previous publication about the Ogasawara Islands The Bonin Islanders Nagasawa’s pictures embody his deep commitment to both the people and places he has been visiting and photographing since 2008. Mary Had a Little Lamb was similarly produced within the context of the photographer’s deep engagement with the islands. Since first learning about the existence of the community of Western Islanders Nagasawa has been interested in the period of U.S. military occupation of Ogasawara following Japan’s surrender in World War II (1945 – 1968) and its repercussions. Most of the physical traces of the occupation disappeared in the decades following reversion to Japanese governance. However the U.S. left some Japanese military sites and artifacts as they were including shipwrecks and the ruins of fortifications trails and caves some of which remain to this day. Thanks to his close connections to elders in the community who generously shared their knowledge of local history Nagasawa was eventually introduced to the abandoned caves and other sites and began to learn about the then still-secret history of the storage of nuclear weapons in caves. For the photographer’s visual investigations exploring this history became critically important despite the seeming limitations imposed by the fact that photographs can only document what can be registered by the camera indeed Nagasawa could only photograph what visibly remained.

What remained were empty caves the weapons and their systems long since taken away. What then to do with the absence of an obvious photographic subject but with the strong presence of an obvious historical subject? The complexity and heaviness of the local knowledge of the secret storage of nuclear weapons in a country that had disavowed such weapons in the wake of the devastating aftermath of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima weighed on the photographer. It was a problem that I too experienced. When I was a graduate student in the late 1990s doing fieldwork in the islands for my doctoral dissertation I had heard some of the same stories Nagasawa was later told about the U.S. occupation years in the islands and nuclear weapons storage. My own research interest in military and cultural heritage tourism in Ogasawara meant that I was grateful for the opportunity to visit the caves but in taking my own photographs as an amateur for my own research and reference purposes I struggled with everything from technical problems such as lighting and composition to larger conceptual issues such as defining a valid purpose in taking such pictures at all. Despite having the feeling that such pictures could be significant I (and my consumer-grade digital camera, purchased on a student budget) struggled to finding a meaningful subject to photograph in what was essentially a huge dark empty space.

In the caves I experienced a variety of emotions and reactions which in retrospect I can summarize as a combination of excitement and transgression. I was exploring a place I wasn’t meant to be seeing learning a terrible secret that had exposed Islanders to dangers stemming from a geopolitical situation they had no ability to control. But I also felt like I was homing in on some kind of essential fact of island life. I sensed the ghosts of the wartime and occupation past. And I imagined what it might have been like during epic battles and in the calm but continuing uncertainty of the cold war years during the occupation. Like most ghosts these were invisible their spectral presence merely an uncanny reminder of the complications of the past. I was left confused over how I was meant to feel about the caves themselves. What was I meant to do with my reactions to the emptiness and to the information I had received?

In the end my photographic experiment in the caves was a failure although my experience walking through the space enhanced my understanding of the occupation years. On reflection perhaps it was this very inability to find anything to photograph in the voluminous emptiness that spoke loudest to me when I was physically in the caves. And perhaps it is because of this experience that when I see Nagasawa’s photographs of the caves now it is this emptiness that speaks loudest to me still. His images feel almost immersive in their darkness even though he curates our glimpse through that darkness with brightly illuminated areas.

This body of work forefronts the uncanny nature of the caves devoid of obvious markers of their past purpose but full of intriguing if unfriendly surfaces and textures. The massive empty volume of the space is given form through the metal covered walls with exposed seams and jutting rivets. Their rusty patinas speak to the passage of time but deny us any obvious markers of their past purpose. Even the plastered white surfaces seen in some images which brightly reflect back the photographer’s light to the camera are dirty possibly stained with rust. There is an overwhelming sense of lost time and memories never to be recovered.

Or perhaps instead the photographs are an entreaty to share the memories that remain so that they may be saved. We have some relief from the relentlessness of the caves and tunnels with the interjection of seascapes. And the final photograph burrows out from the core of the mountain through the darkness and into the sunlight to a view of palm fronds providing some green relief with presumably the sea just beyond. Lifegiving oxygen and light flow in alleviating the claustrophobic darkness.

I cannot answer the question of what to do with these images for myself and certainly not for you. But we can keep thinking about what memory is sited here in Nagasawa’s photographs. For what is a photograph if not a memory. It is a literal memory in physical form of that which existed in front of it. As Susan Sontag writes in On Photography the photograph is “…not only an image (as a painting is an image) an interpretation of the real it is also a trace something directly stenciled off the real like a footprint or a death mask.” 2 Nagasawa’s photographs too are much more than a mechanical recording. He has transmuted the lack of explicit visual evidence of nuclear weapons to his advantage by focusing his lens on the glaring absences within the caves. They are rich enough to communicate on their own speaking of troubled and tortured histories now at least completed if not truly resolved. The spectral absence/presence of “Mary’s Lamb” haunts every photograph. It fills the book with its complicated story of catastrophic destruction - and catastrophic destruction averted - lurking beneath the beauty of the Islands.

“Mary had a little lamb” is actually a nursery rhyme about the opposite of war. It is about love and reciprocity as the teacher explains to the children when they ask why the lamb loves Mary so that it is because Mary loves the lamb. (Indeed, the original version of the rhyme states further that “you each gentle animal/In confidence may bind/And make them follow at your call/If you are always kind.”) Thus the local knowledge of the nuclear weapons storage facility named “Mary’s Lamb” on the Islands represents a local knowledge that all is not what it seems that just as weapons of nuclear annihilation can have whimsical names like Fat Man and Little Boy a nuclear storage facility can be named after a children’s rhyme about love. This powerful collection of photographs holds within it this contradiction and the ghosts it has left behind.

1 Robert D. Eldridge Iwo Jima and the Bonin Islands in U.S.-Japan relations: American strategy
Japanese territory and the islanders in-between (Quantico, Virginia: Marine Corps University Press, 2014) 214.
2 Susan Sontag On Photography. New York: Doubleday 1990. P. 154

Photographer Shinichiro Nagasawa spent 13 years beginning in 2008 making numerous trips to the Ogasawara Islands. The one-way trip by boat from Tokyo takes 24 hours over rough seas to reach the islands. He photographed the way of life of the island's indigenous Bonin Islanders their portraits and the island’s nature and landscapes. These were later published in the photobook The Bonin Islanders. He included old photographs throughout the photobook and interspersed scenery from the past with scenes of everyday life in the present. Turning the pages of the photobook we are drawn in by the tranquil natural landscapes of the island both beautiful and rugged cut from the fabric of time. The collection of photographs is also a record of materials gathered periodically by a cultural anthropologist during fieldwork as well as a story filled with literary emotion. However there are unpublished photos that were not included in that photobook. These are compiled in this collection Mary Had a Little Lamb.

At the beginning of the book Nagasawa states “A nuclear warhead named Mary's Lamb was deployed on Chichijima under U.S. military occupation.” Mary Had a Little Lamb is an American nursery rhyme written in the 19th century. It's a story about a littlegirl named Mary who has a pet lamb that is very attached to her. One day her brother encourages Mary to bring the lamb to school. The sudden appearance of the lamb at school causes a commotion among the students. The students panic because Mary broke the rules by bringing the lamb to school where animals are not usually allowed. The nursery rhyme includes a line about the students wondering “Why does the lamb love Mary so much?” Something that was wasn’t supposed be there was there. The name almost seems to be metaphorically intended.
While photographing the landscapes and battle sites on Chichijima Nagasawa ventured inside areas containing mysterious wreckage. Deep in the mountains he entered the concrete remnants of a bunker built by the Japanese Army in the early Showa period and realized later that this was once a military warehouse. Known as the Imperial Fortress Island Explosives Storehouse it had been a military secret of the Japanese Army. After World War II it was occupied by the United States.

During the Cold War in the mid-1950s President Eisenhower approved the extensive deployment of nuclear weapons to the Pacific Ocean. Twice a year from February 1956 to December 1965 the US Armed Forces' nuclear submarine Polaris stopped at the quay on Chichijima. Massive iron cylinders were hoisted by cranes and brought into the bunker. (*1) The top-secret document of the US Department of Defense Atomic Weapons Maintenance Report contains material indicating the locations of top-secret weapons of the US military that were stored around the world during the Cold War. Before the document was declassified the list indicating the storage locations was blacked out. The exact locations of 25 of the 27 locations were identified but the two places with the notations 'C' and 'I' remained a mystery. Initially 'I' was thought to be Iceland and there was speculation that 'C' could be Ceylon the Chagos Archipelago Chile or Colombia. However subsequent research by sociolinguist Daniel Long based on the memories of the residents of Chichijima during the occupation period led to the conclusion that 'C' probably referred to Chichijima and it was further confirmed that nuclear weapons had also been deployed to Iwo Jima. (*2, *3)

From the entrance of the concrete bunker deep in the mountains of Chichijima Nagasawa walked further in. Past where natural light could penetrate the darkness grew deeper. He kept going further and further into the interior. The sound the humidity the unfamiliar texture of the floor and not knowing what lay ahead must have compelled him to go forward cautiously one step at a time. The inside of the concrete bunker was painted white even the walls and ceiling were painted white as if they had been bleached. The tunnel of the bunker with solid concrete behind it dripping with dense moisture from the vaulted ceiling was the only slight indication that it was part of the island. In the depths of one of the bunkers he saw another block of a concrete bunker also covered in white paint. A bunker within a bunker the room was constructed of concrete and doubly sealed by heavily corroded iron doors. When the sturdy iron doors were opened he was astonished. The walls and ceiling were completely covered with copper plating each seam of which was hermetically sealed. All that was left of some sort of paint that had been brushed onto the surface were darkish traces. The strange texture discolored copper plating corroded iron and slight moisture that had seeped in resembled a burial chamber that held a royal tomb from the time of ancient Egyptian civilization or an otherworldly space in an encounter by humanity with the unknown. It remained as a void that was severed from the world and from time and space. Nagasawa shined a light on the void that was this secret room. Historically there must have been something here but now it was only a place where something had already been lost. Nagasawa shined the light into the darkness in search of something in this nearly forgotten place. He photographed the vacant bunker hoping it would reveal its memories.

What do these photographs convey to us living today (I mean 'us' to include Bonin Islanders, Japanese, Americans, and people from other countries, as well as those living in the past and the future)? Japan promised by law to adhere to the Three Non-Nuclear Principles not to possess produce or permit the introduction of nuclear weapons. But nuclear weapons were brought here. Nuclear bombs were stored and retrieved here. Something that shouldn't be had existed here. Nagasawa's photographs of this place bring to our attention faint memories that lie behind what is shown in the photographs. The people who knew that time are disappearing giving way to a new generation of Bonin Islanders. It is a past of loss and forgetfulness. Nagasawa has unearthed and made visual the secret room—a void severed from time and space.

Human beings will inevitably forget things. Events that have passed recede into the past and things are forgotten. We repeatedly forget and past events sink and vanish into the vast sea of oblivion along with the tumultuous waves of time that are our daily reality. As we live in the present we encounter recognize remember and eventually forget things and events and they are ultimately lost. But there are things we cannot forget. They are our memories. Our memories are what we cannot forget even if we want to. They are etched deep within us and cannot be erased. And places remember. Memory resides in material things and places always remember the past. In the bunker deep in the mountains of Chichijima even as time passes eras change and generations shift even though soldiers guard dogs and those who knew that time dwindle in number the memory of that place remains waiting to be unearthed by someone someday.

Susan Sontag writes in her book On Photography (1977) “Today, everything exists to end in a photograph.” (*4)

Photography is the art of capturing moments in images. However when given time photographers do not just snap the shutter in an instant they observe things dispassionately and meticulously plan for the shot. Photographers construct ideas and manipulate time and light with their cameras. They give light time and while calculating that time they make the unseen world visible in a single image. It is an imaginary world that cannot be seen with the visible light of reality. The art of photography leads us to perceive the images as reality and it separates away a part of this world that we cannot give account of. It is precisely this meticulous thought and intention that is the image behind the photograph that leaps to the eye and stimulates the imagination to engrave itself deep into the mind's eye. As a photographer Nagasawa waits. His clumsy persistence in waiting his brave patience to endure the long pitch-black darkness is transformed into a creative act that finds expression in surreal images. Time is revealed in each photograph and the images become messages that begin speaking to us.

Nagasawa's photographs reflect the memory of the place. Like archaeology by recording substance and texture the memory of the place is unearthed and brought to light. Memory holds neither negative nor positive matter. Entering the bunker in Chichijima Astanding there shining light on the memory and digging and digging as if to unearth it Nagasawa sought to capture the 'void' in front of him in photographs. Today if everything can exist as a photograph the memory of the place that should have been lost the secret room in the bunker deep in the mountains of Chichijima that should have been buried things that should not exist have been brought together to dwell in the photographs as memories of the place. Mary's Lamb was once here. Mary's Lamb is no longer here. But Mary's Lamb has not disappeared to some other place in the world. Nagasawa's photographs pose a question to those of us living today. These photographs are memories to take into the future by those who will live from now on.
We were on the verge of forgetting this place. Now we cannot forget.

*1 Ogasawara Islands Tourist Guide
*2 “Genshi Heiki Haibi Sho” [Atomic weapons deployment report] November 1956
*3 Robert S. Norris William M. Arkin and William Burr “Where They Were,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
　 Vol.55 Issue 6 (December 1991)
*4 Susan Sontag On Photography (Translated by Kojin Kondo, Shobunsha)

Although some of Nagasawaʼs images indeed feature the natural environment, his work is not merely a series of beauty shots of beaches and flowers. Rather, his pictures embody his deep engagement with both the people and places he has been visiting and photographing since 2008. He initially became fascinated by Ogasawara in 2007 after reading in a Japanese travel magazine about a community of “Western Islanders” (as they are often called) in the Islands who trace their heritage to 19th and early 20th-century pioneering settlers from outside of Japan. Although the islands were previously known to European, Japanese, and later, American sailors and whalers, they were first permanently settled by an international group of people from the Pacific, US, and Europe, who sailed from Honolulu in 1830 to establish a whaling colony in the then-uninhabited archipelago. The colony was organized in Honolulu and ostensibly founded under the auspices of Great Britain, but was a de facto independent territory and therefore without the military protection of a powerful country, which made it vulnerable to frequent attacks by pirates in its early years. Subsequent settlers migrated to the Islands from other parts of the world, including Japan, and it was taken over by Japanʼs emerging modern nation-state in the 1870s. Fierce battles between the US and Japan were fought in the Islands during WWII, they were seized in 1944 and occupied by the US Navy after the war, before they were finally reverted to Japanese control in 1968. The Islands are now administered by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and constitute one of the capitalʼs (very) far-flung island villages. Today, Ogasawara is an ethnically diverse community embedded within a larger Japanese society typically (but incorrectly) described as homogeneous. Itʼs no surprise that Nagasawa wanted to learn more about the Islanders, whose story remains little-known to outsiders.

In February of 2008, Nagasawa set out to visit the Islands aboard the Ogasawaramaru, the ship that sails between Tokyo and the port of Futami on Chichijima (“Father Island,” formerly known as Peel Island), the seat of the village government and the home of about 2,000 (out of fewer than 2,500 total) Islanders. The journey aboard the 1,000 passenger ship typically takes about 25 hours. The boat docks at Futami for a few days, turns around and sails back to Tokyo, and does it all over again. There is no commercial airport in the Islands, and this is the only regular mode of transport to the Japanese mainland. Ogasawara time is often measured in boats, the equivalent of a few days. Visitors will often be asked if theyʼll be staying for one boat or longer. Nagasawa excitedly made his way to Ogasawara with a plan to stay for three boats, which he thought would leave plenty of time to introduce himself to members of the Western Islander community and take photographs of them. Things did not go as he expected, however.

The first person Nagasawa sought out was Stanley Minami, the owner and captain of a whale watching boat. Nagasawa introduced himself to Mr. Minami shortly after arriving on Chichijima and told him he was interested in learning about the history of the “Western indigenous people” of the Islands and wanted to take pictures of them. He was promptly admonished to “Get lost – we arenʼt here for you to stare at. We arenʼt Americans. We arenʼt Japanese. We are Bonin Islanders! Donʼt come around here to take pictures just because you are curious!”

This was not an auspicious start, but it nevertheless turned out to be an important lesson for the photographer. Nagasawa walked away from that first, discouraging encounter understanding that this would be a far more complicated and lengthier project than he had originally thought. Fortunately, he soon met others who were willing to talk with him, some of whom even allowed him to take their pictures. They hinted that there was a troubling history of photography in the Islands, including a few cases in living memory where Western Islanders were treated like specimens or objects for scientific study rather than full human beings. One project in particular – conducted by a German geneticist initially in 1927 with a follow-up study in 1957– focused on producing photographic evidence of “race mixing” or “crossbreeding” and phenotypic expression, emblematic of the scientific racism of the era. This study rankled members of the older generation who remembered it personally and those who had heard about it from older relatives and friends who were directly subjectedto it. Photography was deeply implicated in this study, and clearly left a lasting bad impression in the minds of many Islanders. But it was neither the first nor the last (mis) use of photography to create a distrust of the medium among the Bonin Islanders.

The history of photography in the Islands dates to some of the earliest years of Japanese – Islander interactions. The first photographs were produced during Japanʼs 1875 – 1876 colonial expedition to the Ogasawara Islands, which followed a previous, short-lived, unsuccessful attempt to take over the settlement in 1862, toward the end of the Edo Period. (No photographs were produced during this expedition.) The successful Meiji expedition resulted in Japanese rule in the Islands that lasted until the late stages of WWII (resuming in 1968 and continuing to the present day), and was the first Japanese government colonial expedition to include an officially commissioned professional photographer, the Tokyo-based commercial photographer, Matsuzaki Shinji. As an expedition photographer, Matsuzaki created photographs for government information gathering purposes as well as commercial sale to the Japanese public. The landscapes and especially images of the Bonin Islanders created during the expedition read as visual information about Japanʼs new colonial possession – its land and human subjects – made for bureaucratic purposes, rather than as thoughtful or intimate portraits. We can only speculate about the exact conditions of production of these first photographs, but the colonial context suggests that the Islanders would have had little agency in deciding how – or even whether – the pictures would have been made.

After Japanese control of the Islands was firmly established, the government, scientists, media, and others undertook further photography projects, some of　which were ostensibly organized to study the native flora and fauna, but which often included some images of the Islanders, especially the Western Islanders. An album of photographs was prepared for the Taisho Emperor in which many pictures of Islanders were included, and some of which were captioned with othering or racist and language. One image of a mother and child was said to show “Naturalized South Seas Barbarians” (nanʼyō doban kikajin). Western Islanders were frequently featured in picture postcards of Ogasawara produced in the first decades of the 20th century, and were typically shown as exotics, set apart from Japanese settlers. As the war encroached ever closer to Ogasawara and as the outlook appeared increasingly dangerous, the Japanese government evacuated civilians to the mainland in 1944. However, members of the Western Islander community (and their Japanese spouses/children) petitioned American authorities in 1946 to be allowed to return to Ogasawara, after having suffered terrible discrimination as “foreigners” in Japan,as they were easily identified with the American enemy despite their Japanese nationality, and suffered severe wartime and immediate postwar deprivation, as the entire country struggled to feed, clothe, and house its devasted populace.

As the US and Japanese governments were preparing the Islands to be returned to Japanese control in 1968, one village elder proclaimed in a newspaper article that he feared the Bonin Islanders would be come “South Seas Ainu,” meaning that he did not want the community to be othered or exoticized by the Japanese government or future visitors. There was a very rational fear that photography could be mobilized to objectify community members.

Over the years, many other incidents of photographs being taken of Western Islanders without their permission (or compensation) occurred, which naturally resulted inmany peopleʼs distrust of camera-wielding outsiders. Nagasawa was not aware ofthis history when he stepped off the boat in Futami harbor, but took to heart Stanley Minamiʼs proclamation of his identity as a Bonin Islander. This understanding shaped Nagasawaʼs approach to working in the Islands. He realized that he had to attempt to make true portraits of people by getting to know them well over time, learn about their personal and community histories, and come to an understanding of their home, the Bonin Islands. He set about to learn as much as he could about Ogasawaraʼs history, not only from published sources but also oral history, talking with as many people as he could, learning about their personal and community histories, and coming to an understanding of their home, the Bonin Islands.

This contextual understanding is not only what made it possible for Nagasawa to be allowed access to community members. It means that he was partnering with individuals in the community in order to successfully photograph them. It made it possible for him to create portraits with what I would call “photographic partners” rather than “subjects.”

Nagasawa also started to take pictures of places that he learned had local meaning – not merely because they were attractive. These histories are not always accessible to those of us on the outside looking in, but the photographs communicate something about the Bonin Islanders identity, history, and indeed lives.

Nagasawaʼs Ogasawara images reflect a distinctly contemporary sensibility and profoundly new relationship between photographer and subject than was evident in early photographs of the Islanders. As Nagasawa developed this project, he came to understand that his own identity – as a Japanese photographer – required him not only to acknowledge the difficult history and legacy of photography in Ogasawara, but to actively create new relationships built on mutual trust and understanding. In order to make successful portraits, he needed to collaborate with willing partners. The tables had turned completely, and the Bonin Islanders now had the power to refuse

or grant permission to the visiting photographer. Nagasawaʼs persistence in building meaningful relationships with the Islanders and his developing understanding of their history and identity started a virtuous cycle that allowed him to create richer and more authentic portraits of people and the places that hold meaning for them. The result of these collaborations is the set of photographs you will view in this book: a rich and honest portrait, created with Bonin Islanders, not of them.

Chichijima used to be uninhabited. The name of the group of the islands (“Bonin Islands”) is taken from Japanese word for inhabited (“無人:mujin”); the pronunciation changed from “mujin” to “bunin”, and ultimately to “bonin”.These extremely remote islands have a complicated history.
It goes back to the 19th century.
In 1830, five Europeans and twenty Canadians arrived at Chichijima via the Hawaian Sandwich Islands as the first settlers. The island then developed into an important harbor that provides food and fuel to whaling boats from all over the world. At various times, America, Britain and Russia attempted, in vain,to take control of the Bonin Islands. In 1873, the Bonin Islands were officially declared Japanese territory, which forced the islanders to become Japanese citizens. Many people from the main islands of Japan subsequently movedthere, and the original settlers were differentiated as “Western Islanders”.By the time of World War II, the population of Chichijima grew to about four thousand. During the War, Iwo-jima and other islands became the sites of fierce land battles and were converted to forts for the Japanese army. All the islanders were forced to evacuate to mainland Japan. After the War, the Bonin Islands were occupied by GHQ until 1968. The GHQ allowed only “Western Islanders” to return, and for 23 years, every aspect of islandersʼ life, including language and education, was influenced by American culture. They were only informed of the territorial restoration to Japan right before it happened.
About forty years later, I came across an old family photograph in a travel magazine. In front of a thatch-roofed hut were two men and three children wearing kimonos, and they all looked European or American. “Is this really Japan?” The image left a deep impression on me. It spoke of a history, something dramatic, that our textbooks don't tell. I felt an urgent need to take photos of those people. I made my way to Chichijima for the first time in February 2008.
The first person I got in touch with was Minami Stanley.

When I knocked on his door, he appeared and immediately said “Go away! Weʼre not freaks for you to gawk at; the government has caused us enough trouble already. Weʼre not Americans or Japanese. We are Bonin Islanders! Take your curiosity and caameras and get lost!” I was rebuffed by the first islander that I met on the first day I arrived.
But his words “Bonin Islanders” really struck me. It was an expression derived from long and serious self-questioning about their identity, in defiance of years of political interference. “Bonin Islanders” became the theme for my project.

Who are the “Bonin Islanders”?
I kept looking for the answer as I took photos. They lived alone for 46 years, from when the first settlers arrived until Japanese territorialization in 1876.It was a racially mixed international community. Many Japanese moved in
too afterwards. There wasnʼt a so-called traditional or unique culture. As I proceeded, I realized that the identification of “Bonin Islanders” is limited to those who were born before the GHQ occupation. It took even longer to realize that this was underpinned by the birth certificates and passports that the American army issued.