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[Japanese-Americana - Basketball] Takahashi, PauloABAA

Five Photographs of the 1948-49 Del Rey W.Y.B.L. "A" Championship Basketball Team

1949rif. BK0106Del Rey California 1949. Five gelatin silver photographs approximately 8 x 10 inches. Four with the stamp of photographer Paulo Takahashi. Some curling and edge creasing with occasional light staining and wear; very good overall. A fine group of photographs documenting the Del Rey basketball team during its 1948-49 Western Young Buddhist League championship season. The principal image shows the players seated on the gymnasium floor amid a large crowd and is captioned in white "'48 DEL REY '49 / W.Y.B.L. 'A' CHAMPS." The remaining four photographs show game action in the same crowded gymnasium including shots under the basket and a player driving through the lane with spectators packed along the walls only a few feet from the court. Basketball was already a substantial part of Japanese American Buddhist youth culture in California before the war. Contemporary newspapers record Del Rey teams participating in Central California Buddhist basketball during the 1930s1 while the Del Rey YBA was sufficiently active by 1939 to take responsibility for issues of the regional Bussei Review.2 The Western Young Buddhist League itself had prewar roots extending at least to the 1920s with records of its presidents and conference activities preserved among the Buddhist Churches of America papers at UCLA.3 Organized Japanese American basketball was being rebuilt rapidly after wartime forced removal and incarceration during the period of these photographs. An account of the postwar leagues notes that by 1946 Central Valley teams were already playing under Buddhist league sponsorship while Japanese American communities in the Bay Area were still organizing their first postwar circuit.4 Paulo Takahashi was an established Central California photographer. Pacific Citizen credited photographs to him by 1952 and identified "Paulo Takahashi Studio" with a Del Rey address in 1953; by 1958 he was active in the Professional Photographers Association of Central California. 1 "YWBA CAGE RESULTS" The Japanese American News January 17 1934 1. 2 "'Bussei Review' to Be Published in Del Rey" Japanese American News November 25 1939 2. 3 Buddhist Churches of America records Collection 2364. UCLA Library Special Collections Charles E. Young Research Library University of California Los Angeles. 4 Steven D. Chin "A brief history of Japanese American basketball in the Bay Area" Nichi Bei News May 9 2019. . unknown books