Large steam ship departing port being pulled by a tugboat
On the back of this card Tatsura Naru is handwritten, perhaps the name of the boat. It could well be one of the boats, or similar to the many boats that brought thousands of emigrants from Japan across the Pacific during the first decades of the 20th century. The ships that transported the Japanese were often set up with large open steerage platforms for sleeping. Japanese immigrants worked in fields, small stores and factories in US states like California until World War II, when most were interned during the war with Japan.