Tag Archives: Carey D. Miller

Corrections & Additions: Details on the train ride

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Information cardsThe correction: The train trip that produced the wonderful little graphics featured here yesterday was in September 1936, rather than 1937, according to several letters written by Professor Carey D. Miller during and after the trip.

The addition: Three more of those wonderful advertising cards, including the one shown here, turned up yesterday as I made another pass through several file folders of miscellaneous materials. I’ve added them to yesterday’s image gallery. Just click on the image to see all twelve images. Hopefully, a helpful reader will step forward with quick translations of the latest three.

The handwritten letters from Professor Miller fill in the background of the flyers and the trip.

The first letter is dated September 11, 1936, “Enroute Morioka-Tokyo”, written on stationary of the Sapporo Grand Hotel.

We are returning from a 2 day visit to Sapporo in Hokaido where we went to see the university and experimental work they are doing & to see the type of country as compared with the southern part that we shall see later. We haven’t been here a week yet but feel that we have seen quite a bit of Japan.

Miller was traveling to Morioka and then on to Tokyo.

She went on to describe the little information cards.

I thought you and the other girls who read Japanese might be entertained with these little slips that the girls from the dining car handed out to us on the way to Sapporo from Hakodate. I think they are very artistic & even if we couldn’t read them we managed to get some good.

Miller wrote another note after arriving in Tokyo.

We had a thrilling time in Morioka. Mrs. Sugino took us out to a country village. We met a number of interesting people & many fascinating things we could not have seen without the entries which her work and acquaintances there afforded.

I previously had posted photographs Miller took while in Furudate Village near Morioka, mistakenly dated 1937. Now I’ll have to go back and correct the dates based on this additional information.

Wonderful art from a 1937 train ride in Japan

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Back in December 2011, I posted a batch of photos taken by UH Professor Carey D. Miller during a 1937, pre-WWII trip to Japan.

Miller, the internationally-known nutritionist who established the Home Economics Department at the University of Hawaii, traveled to Japan to meet with colleagues and observe farming and cooking techniques.

[text]Now I’ve found some other mementos from that trip while sorting my mother’s papers after her death at the end of January. These seem to be a series of ads about dining options on the Mikado Dining Car while traveling by train through Japan.

These are small, no more than 3×5, printed on fragile paper with wonderful art work.

I’ll have to await comments from readers who can translate from the Japanese for a more accurate assessment of what these represent.

–> See the collection of 1937 Japan train memorabilia.

Three chickens, 12 garlic cloves, and one coconut–a vintage curry recipe

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I’ve got two oldies to share for today.

First, several vintage recipes found among the correspondence files of Carey D. Miller, professor of home economics and a nutritionist who trained several generations of local women in the science of food. She taught at the University of Hawaii from 1921 to 1961, if I recall correctly.

These gems include Chicken Curry (Patchi Kothmalli Curry). A handwritten note at the top says, “Recipe from Madras (Miss Kausalya friends).”

It calls for, among other ingredients, three chickens, 12 green chills, 12 garlic cloves, 18 leaflets curry leaf (murkaya koenigi), and the milk of one coconut.

The chicken curry is accompanied by mutton and rice pilan, coconut chutney, tomato chutney, cauliflower and mince meat, and payassum.

This is all serious looking stuff.

Click here for the two pages of recipes.

The second item is an old photo of what looks like University Avenue just above the UH campus and looking up into Manoa Valley. I found it in my mother’s scrapbook along with other pictures taken around 1940. At the time, she was on the staff of the UH Home Economics Department.

Looking into Manoa Valley

If you would like to see more detail, just click on the photo to see a larger version.

Photos from UH prof’s 1937 trip to Japan

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In 1937, Professor Carey D. Miller, the internationally-known nutritionist who established the Home Economics Department at the University of Hawaii, traveled to Japan to meet with colleagues and observe farming and cooking techniques.

Click on the photo below to view all of Miller’s photographs from Japan.

This was likely part of a longer trip which included Korea, where Miller documented the making of kimchi. Those photos were posted here earlier.

My mother, who had been a student of Professor Miller, went to work for her after graduating from UH in 1935, and remained a lifelong friend. When Miller died in 1985, my mother cleared remaining remnants of her papers out of her Manoa home. A few small sheets of paper containing contact prints of photographs from the trip to Japan were among the materials she was able to retrieve.

Most of the photographs were taken at Furudate Village, “near Morioka”, according to a handwritten note.

1937 photo

According to a Google translation of one bit of Shiwa Tourism Information:

In 1889 (Meiji 22), the Meiji Government reorganized the local government system. It established Hizume Town, Furudate Village, Mizuwake Village, Shiwa Village, Akaishi Village, Hikobe Village, Sahinai Village, Akazawa Village, and Nagaoka Village. The present day Shiwa formed on April 1, 1955, when the one town and eight villages merged.

I don’t know anything about the area. Was it affected by the nuclear meltdowns? What does it look like today?

The last several photos in the set are from a visit to the estate of Baron Masuda in Odawara.

Masuda, who died in 1938, was a major Japanese industrialist.

According to Wikipedia:

In 1874, Masuda established the Senshu Kaisha trading company in Yokohama with Inoue’s support. In 1876, at the age of 29, Masuda was appointed the president of Mitsui Trading Company (Mitsui Bussan Kaisha) and contributed to the development of the Mitsui zaibatsu . Mitsui quickly became a dominant player in Japanese exports of silk cloth and thread, cotton, coal, and rice, and in the import of industrial products and weaponry.

Masuda negotiated with the Ministry of Industry to acquire ownership of the Miike coal mines at very favorable prices when the government decided to divest itself of industries. This became the subsidiary company, Mitsui Mining Company, in 1889, with Dan Takuma as president. In 1900, he created the Taiwan Sugar Corporation, beginning Mitsui’s expansion into Japanese overseas colonies. By the 1910s, Mitsui had developed into Japan’s largest general trading company, accounting for nearly 20% of Japan’s total trade.

Miller’s photos include several of Masuda himself.

I wonder whether the university has any other letters or papers describing this journey to Japan?

Oh–FYI–the original copies of these photos were donated to the UH library.

–>View all of the photographs from this 1937 trip to Japan