I left Japan in August 1962 and arrived in New York just as the Cuban
missile crisis was
starting. I thought: “What? I came all this way to die in a nuclear attack?”
But it was soon over. I moved to Chicago and couldn’t get a job, so I started
my own catering business. Japanese food was not popular then and I knew enough
to fool ignorant, naïve, rich people in Chicago. Then the Tribune did a story
about me and somebody sent it to my mother. She called me and said: “Hiroji,
stop doing this. We didn’t send you to America to be in the cooking business. I
will not tolerate it.” Yes ma’am! I couldn’t say no to my mother so I focused
on photography instead.
I had great curiosity and found myself
welcomed by black people, white people, Indian people, whatever. They’d never
seen Asian guys, so I had a big advantage and used it to get access to things.
I just smiled and looked harmless. I could be like air. At the time, the Black
Panthers were starting
to get popular and I managed to get to know them. For some reason, these three
leaders wanted to be photographed with a very big Picasso sculpture at Chicago
City Hall. It’s not interesting, I said. Then it started snowing, so we went
outside and I took this. I didn’t give them any instructions – they just went
down there and saluted, never asking me anything about myself, or what I might
be doing the picture for. They pretty much ignored me.
The designer of my new book is white
English and he wanted this shot to be included. I’ve travelled 3 million miles
and taken 4 million photos in the course of 55 years – and he was picking lots
of black American pictures for the book. So I said: “Stuart, you are crazy.
It’s out of proportion.” In a way, he’s scared – that’s why those pictures
intrigue him. Me, I’m not afraid of them. But the English did nasty things. They
made money by selling slaves. So maybe he’s intrigued out of a guilty
conscience.
My childhood experiences during the
second world war do affect what I photograph, though. Tokyo was bombed heavily
and it scared me. When I was six, I saw fishermen killed by American aeroplanes
before my eyes. So I refused to photograph war, conflict, or dead bodies. But
somehow I ended up going out to Saigon during the Vietnam war, because so many
other photographers were blacklisted by the South Vietnamese government.
I find America a very interesting place.
It’s not quite a melting pot. American men – all of them want to be cowboys.
It’s extremely religious, too. Mormons are strange people. And the agriculture
is so huge. In North Dakota, they grow barley on a fantastic scale, and I
wanted a photograph it from a small Cessna plane. A farmer had one and I asked
him if I could hire it. Yes, yes, help yourself, he said. He thought I could
fly it myself. This only happens in the US.
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