[Seer Among the Japanese in America: The Life of Kobayashi Masasuke] Zaibei doho no senkaku Kobayashi Masasuke den: Kyuseigun zaibei nihonjinbu no katsudo

Tokyo: Yamamuro Gunpei Senshu Kankokai, 1963. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. A biography of Major Kobayashi Masasuke, an early Issei pioneer who arrived in America in 1902 and who established Japanese units of the Salvation Army beginning in 1919. Includes reprints of his sermons and lectures and reminiscences of his friends and associates."-A Buried Past, 837.

Masasuka "landed in the United States as a student-laborer in 1902. He first attended Stanford University briefly, and then became an employee of the Japanese American Industrial Corporation." In 1919, he "established Japanese units of the Salvation Army within Japanese immigrant society. Kobayashi viewed the prevalence of gambling as a pernicious evil corrupting the moral fiber of Japanese immigrants. Under his leadership, the Japanese Salvation Army campaigned against Chinese gambling all through the post-World War I years, with an intense fervor often bordering on fanaticism... Kobayashi did not hesitate to seek the help of local law-enforcement officers and municipal government officials to achieve his goal of wiping out Chinese gambling houses."-Issei by Yuji Ichioka, p. 178-179.

378 pages plus five leaves of plates. 5-1/4 by 7-1/4 inches.

OCLC: 27455862, 222716457, 673981311, 1021041268, 33642596, 834975799. First edition. A very good copy in blue cloth; probably lacking the publisher's slipcase.