[Scrapbook]: Fuji Iron and Steel Company

Tokyo, Japan, 1953. Hardcover. Near Fine. Quarto. Measuring 8.5" x 12". Brown paper boards with "Scrapbook Style 'B' Bunkajimuyohin Co. LTD. Tokyo" on the front board. Contains 124 sepia-toned or black and white gelatin silver photographs measuring between 1" x 1" and 3" x 5", with captions. Very good album with wear on the board edges and some spotting with near fine photographs.

A scrapbook kept by W.S. "Bill" Vaughan, an American working at Fuji Iron and Steel Company in Tokyo between 1952 and 1953. The album opens with a photo of Vaughan under the title, "Industrial Pictures in Japan 1952-1953." Following this are photos detailing the production of iron and steel at the company including lime washes, making steel pellets, and digging iron ore, among others. Tipped in is a "pelletizing flow sheet" drawing detailing the making of steel pellets. Vaughan features his colleagues, many of them native Japanese, and the research operations he was a part of. They traveled across Japan visiting other plants and operations. Much of his travel is photographed including landscapes, train trips, tea houses and clubs they visited, and people they met along the way. One photo shows a group of men looking over schematics with the caption, "Joe receiving plant layout instructions in Hirohito office May 1953." Laid in towards the end of the album is a typed report titled, *A Year in Japan: Fulbrighters Report* and a newsletter *Bulletin: The America-Japan Society Volume III No. 1 May - June 1954*. The Japanese economy was in an upswing due to demand for steel in the Korean War and this album documents the steel boom in the country.

An extensive collection of photographs detailing the steel industry in Japan in the early 1950s.